Understanding our footprint today, makes us better tomorrow

Do you drive, buy fast fashion, throw out items in good condition, or drink bottled water? Then, you are directly negatively influencing the natural environment. Although there is so much you can do now to change your ways, there is a famous saying that goes, ‘prevention is better than cure’. In this vein, our grade 6s in CISS were educated on all humanity is doing to, but also for the planet, and how to communicate the destructive effects in order to make a change in the world.

Initially,students were taught about and able to research the harmful conditions beingcaused by mankind, namely; overpopulation, water and air pollution, globalwarming, climate change, genetic modification, ocean acidification, overfishing, deforestation, acid rain, and ozone depletion. The students werehorrified at the atrocities that they now realize are caused by mankind. Whenfurther establishing the positive impacts humans are having on the planet –recycling, wildlife preserves, and environmental protection laws, they understoodthat these positives are only a necessity because of the already practicednegatives. They wanted, needed others to understand this too. 

To communicate and bring about awareness of these detrimental effects, the students were taught how to create effective posters. Already understanding their audience and the message that they wanted to communicate, they were educated on how the image, text and colors communicate the purpose of the poster.

“A picture is worth a thousand words”, Henrik Ibsen. Based on this, the students were shown examples of how images are able to communicate complete ideas that are able to emotionally invoke. After being inspired by this, the students set out on their mission to craft the perfect image for their awareness campaign. When creating their own beautiful masterpieces, they sought after colors that they knew would portray the most visually impactful effect according to their chosen environmental impact.

Once complete, the students needed to find a message that connected to the image, completed the poster, and called their audience to action. By shaping their messages around human truths, and keeping their communication short and to the point, the students created meaningful messages that were hard hitting. To further draw the attention of their audience, and make the message more impactful, they made it bold, and designed their own text style to convey the true meaning their words held.

The overall outcome; beautiful, yet heart wrenching persuasive works that portray the absolute destruction caused by humans on the earth’s natural environment. Masterpieces with images, colors and texts that do not speak, but scream volumes out to the world. However, the most important effect was the impression on the learners. Their ability to understand their footprint today, so that they can make a better tomorrow.