ACD Goal 14: Life Below Water!

Sanmort and I have been working on our ACD (Active Citizenship Day) for around 3 weeks now, staying up late to make posters and covering the living room with paint in an attempt to paint some bottles. Our bond is really strong as it is, but we bonded even more over working on our ACD together and I couldn’t have picked a better partner!

Our goal was number 14 which is life below water, I found this quite easy and emotional to talk about as it’s something I’ve always been quite passionate about.

We started off with a poster we had made, explaining how we can save the planet and our oceans, this was also translated in Khmer. This included solutions such as; Reducing pollution, protecting our eco system, ending over fishing and illegal fishing, help developing smaller fishing communities with sustainable practices, scientific co-operation and making and maintaining international laws.

We also played a game where the Khmer had a number and the UK had a phrase, they both had to walk around the room and find the number that they thought fit their statement. For example, a UK would have “how many known species are there in the ocean” and the Khmer would have the matching number “200,000” and they would find each other and explain why they thought this was right. To my surprise, they got this 100% correct.

Sanmort and I also did a Poster in explosive fishing and long line fishing and how it is horrifically bad for the oceans. The next game was the funniest for Sanmort, Hannah and I. We crowded everyone in a huge circle so that they were really cramped and then locked them in with chairs. We then poured 3 huge bags of rubbish on them; including plastic bottles, food packaging and much more. Julinda, one of the Khmer said “ok can we stop now” which made a very good point - marine life in the oceans can’t just “stop” being swarmed in our plastic, it’s their home and they live like that.

Another game that Sanmort and I had planned was where we surrounded someone’s neck in plastic (it was safe...ish) and then proceeded to tie their hands together and behind their back to see how they would get out. They both struggled to get out which heightened the point of plastic in the ocean. This was accompanied with 2 videos made by the national geographic channel.

Around the room, we had 10 quotes about ruining the planet. We made everyone pick their favourite and explain why which worked really well and hit some soft spots as some of the quotes were quite moving.

Our final activity was to show different ways to use plastic bottles instead of littering them or burning them. There’s no recycling system in Srae Thmei and they can’t afford to have one so the littering problem is huge! We painted plastic bottles that we collected from the office and hung them on the trees outside, to place our mark on Srae Thmei. I was also really surprised that we could find paint in the community too!

These are a few of the ones hung outside!

To finish off, we gave Ed a plastic bottle medal that says “no.1 litter picker” and a bag of marshmallows because every day without fail he Goes out on his own and picks up litter for an hour.

Our ACD was fun and a success, a very proud moment for Sanmort and I!