NEWS

Following the huge success regarding the first edition of the School Starter Pack Project the Eastern Regional Council decided to redo the project for the second year running. Since the young generation is the future the Eastern Regional Council priorities such investments for the following age group, as it’s vital for the younger age groups to be educated & made environmentally aware. Sustainability has become a household conversation and through various awareness campaigns the public is continuously learning new ways on how to be more sustainable in their everyday life. This statement brings us to the main aim of this project, which is to show students together with their parents/guardians, that there are other more sustainable stationery alternatives to the common stationery bought at the start of each scholastic year. Additionally, this project functions as a financial aid to parents who annually splurge on school material.

For this project all Year 1 students attending the 23 primary schools & an additional 3 catechism centres present in our region participated in this project, amounting to a total of 1250 children. The sustainable stationery set consisted of the following goods: pocket made out of jute and cotton, 15cm wooden ruler, wooden sharpener, cardboard pen, recycled wooden pencil, eraser, a set of 12 pencil colours, sprout pencil, seed paper and a plant pot made out of recycled material. To make the stationery set more appealing to the young students, the project’s character ”Bertu l-Ballotra” was printed on the jute and cotton pocket, set of 12 pencil colours, seed paper & plant pot.

The endemic Maltese Weasel was chosen as the project’s character because it is a very beautiful & rare species, where a lot of maltese people have either never heard about or seen one in the wild. Via this character we will be increasing the knowledge & awareness of this unique species and thus be able to further appreciate Maltese Biodiversity.

The project was conducted at the start of the 2023 – 2024 scholastic year, thus during the end of September & October 2023. The distribution process involved members from the Eastern Regional Council & respective Local Council’s going to all the schools & catechism centres eligible for this project, deliver a short interactive speech about the goods to all Year 1 students & then give the stationery set to all the students. The Eastern Regional Council would like to thank the schools & catechism centres involved as well as the respective Local Council’s for their full cooperation in ensuring the success of this project.