Gizo (Solomon Islands). To celebrate the Season of Creation, the population of Gizo and the Educating Community of Mother Angela Vallese House, of Mary Help of Christians Province of the Pacific Region (SPR), are involved in various ecological initiatives.
The students of the Technical School of the Diocese (Urban Training Center) run by the FMA, coordinated by the Professors of Mechanics, created waste bins by cutting oil containers in half, welding the handles, and building the lid. By giving space to creativity, with ever new shapes and decorations they equipped the oratory, the school, and other community spaces that did not have them. The construction of bins also involved the mothers of the parish who, with the help of a volunteer from the Diocese, created original models and won an award at a municipal event on plastic recycling.
To protect the environment and reduce pollution in the seas, the organizing Committee of the municipal fruit and vegetable market  banned the use of plastic bags, commissioning women from neighboring villages in Gizo to supply traditional baskets made with coconut palm leaves and sold to market customers, earning a contribution for labor.
In the wake of the “Let’s keep our city clean” project, which involved the children and young people of the Parish in the ecological commitment for the city streets, the Municipality of Gizo launched a Program that provides for the temporary hiring of small groups of parishioners , friends, young people, women who are assigned weekly to different points in the city and its surroundings to keep the spaces clean and mow the ditches and roadsides. The garbage truck goes to collect the bags accumulated along the road by the groups to deposit them in the landfill. In this way, the city is kept clean by giving a job opportunity to the people who need it.
The Ministry of Education, Vocational Schools Sector, has also chosen three schools, including the FMA’s Urban Training Center, to begin a pilot project of recycling through plastic melting. A team from the Ministry will teach teachers and students how to build the oven necessary for the process and will teach women from the local community to use the fuels produced, encouraging the community to recuperate plastic.
“These are small steps that not only help the environment, but also communion between people, sensitizing us to care for nature and one another,” says Sr. Anna Maria Gervasoni, a missionary in the Solomon Islands.
“The urgent challenge of protecting our common home includes the concern to unite the whole human family in the search for sustainable and integral development, as we know that things can change. Humanity still has the ability to collaborate to build our common home”.
(Pope Francis, LS 13)
