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After a successful introduction in 2022, Mudfish No Plastic and the Government of Hulu Sungai Tengah is showing their sincere commitment to reducing single-use plastic in the region by holding a three days workshop called #HSTNOPLASTIK located in the heart of Berabai City. The collaboration is facilitated through the help of Dinas Lingkungan Hidup Kota Berabai who hosted Mudfish and the participants in their office for two full days, held from November 21st to November 23rd. The current concern in regards to plastic waste happened as plastic remains to be the biggest composition in total trash nationaly according to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in 2022.
As an organization that focuses on educating to reduce, Mudfish focuses their first day on the city by meeting and training with teachers from Balai Guru Penggerak or BGP of Kota Berabai. BGP focuses on creating teachers who are innovative and inclusive in their approach towards education and Mudfish sees this as an important chance to further commit their training to the teachers, some of whom had been trained previously from last year, while also introducing these ideas to newly recruited BGP teachers. The workshop does not only include training in the Mudfish curriculum but also sharing sessions about challenges and difficulties the teacher met regarding creating environmentally conscious students or schools. The sessions were filled with laughter and warm welcome by the participants which sends visible hope about creating schools educator who care about the danger of single-use plastic and are willing to create a generation that will stop the common use of it.
After lunch, we invited PASKIBRAKA of Hulu Sungai Tengah which consisted of High school students throughout the regency who were tasked to become flag raises on the Independence Day of Indonesia which happened on August 17th every year. Their training regiment requires a high level of discipline which is what we thought would be needed the most when it comes to combating single-use plastic through reducing it. The students who came to the workshop were listening thoughtfully regarding the impact of continuous consumption of products with plastic packaging, especially water bottles. Hence, we are advocating for them to use reusable water bottles from mudfish that they can use every day to start reducing plastic bottles. The session ended with warm and thankful notes as the students gathered and took pictures together as a reminder of today’s workshop.
On the 2nd day of #HSTNOPLASTIK, DLH Berabai and Mudfish invited schools from the Adiwiyata Programme which is a campaign from the Ministry of Environment, to create a school that is aware of the importance of preserving the environment. It was also Teachers Day so besides holding a training, Mudfish decided to celebrate the day together by asking the teachers about their grievances of being educators through other sharing sessions and creative poems to alleviate their stress and burdens. The training was then wrapped with a lot of poems and comparative pictures to remember the day.
Then, the afternoon session was attended by students of STAI (Sekolah Tinggi Agama Islam) Berabai. The workshop was met with meaningful and enthusiastic discussion from the participants. The students were engaging back and forth and were listening carefully, their enthusiastic effort can be seen from their eagerness to answer the question given and join the discourse throughout the workshop. They are also attentive enough to understand the importance of using reusable menstrual pads as they are already aware of the bad ingredients from single-use pads that are commonly used these days.
The 3 day event of #HSTNOPLASTIC were packed with both new and old faces, and as always Mudfish No Plastic remain grateful to the government of Hulu Sungai Tengah for their invitation and involvement in committing to create a place with fewer plastics. We are optimistic about keeping the collaboration going to further expand our campaign, not only in Berabai City but to less accessible areas that need the motivation to reduce single-use plastic the most. For better HST that is HSTNOPLASTIC.