ZOOMLION INAUGURATES ZOOM KIDS (PAGE 11, JUNE 11, 2010)

Zoomlion Ghana Limited, a private waste management company, under its Zoom Kids Sanitation Clubs Initiative, has donated over 150 wheelbarrows, shovels, wellington boots, hand gloves and nose masks to some selected schools in the Bolgatanga Municipality.
The items were presented at the launch of the Zoom Kids Clubs in the Upper East Region to help the beneficiary schools to champion the cause of inculcating the habit of keeping a clean environment in the schools.
Zoom Kids Clubs is an initiative that seeks to engage children in primary and junior high schools and inculcate in them the habits of keeping a clean environment among their peers.
Members of these clubs are also to serve as ambassadors in the fight to protect the environment.
The schools which benefited from the donations included Awogeya Primary and JHS, St. Charles and St. John’s Primary and JHS, Methodist Primary and JHS and Adabasi Primary and JHS.
The rest are Fountain Gate Primary and JHS, Mt. Sinai Primary and JHS, Victory Primary and JHS, Doayin Primary and JHS and St., Anthony of Padua Primary and JHS, all in the Bolgatanga Municipality.
The activities of the sanitation clubs include educational talks on personnel hygiene, health and sanitation and sanitation diseases by resource persons, beautification exercise in schools, tree planting activities, excursion to some waste management organisations, as well as regular inter-school quiz competitions on sanitation at the end of every term.
In a speech read on his behalf by the National Environmental Sanitation Supervisor of the company, Mrs Beatrice Ampons, the Chief Executive Officer of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, Mr Joseph Siaw Agyapong, reminded the children of the need to protect the environment, stressing that a healthy environment would prevent the spread of diseases such as malaria.
“The company wants the children in our schools to imbibe and grow with the culture of good sanitation. We hope to bring the minds of the pupils to consciousness on sanitation,” he said.
He advised the kids to practise hand-washing with soap and water, stressing that when practised over a long period of time, it would save the children from becoming sick frequently.
Mr Agyapong thanked the Ghana Education Service for embracing the concept and stated that the programme would be extended to other schools in the region to help educate the children on sanitation for good health, growth and ultimately helping make Ghana clean.
The Regional Operations Supervisor of Zoomlion Ghana, Mr Laud Mike Tagoe, said the company recognised children as key players and, therefore, entreated them, as well as their teachers, to do their best so that their generation would be different in terms of cleanliness.
The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Mark Woyongo, who inaugurated the clubs, said a lot of Ghanaians needed to change their behaviour and expressed the hope that through the clubs, children would be used to educate the public towards changing their negative attitudes towards the environment.
He commended the management of Zoomlion Ghana Limited for creating such an important avenue for the training of children on the need to make the environment clean and safe to live in.
Mr Woyongo expressed the hope that the club would not only inculcate good sanitary habits in the children but also make them peer educators in their various communities as they educate their friends and parents to desist from activities that polluted and destroyed the environment.