For the second year running All 4 Diving Indonesia & Mermaid Liveaboards have joined forces to host an educational Earth Day 2015 support event for local school children in Bali, 30 kids from ‘Children from the Compassion International Child Development Program’ and C3 Church in Bali on Semawang Beach.

The event started with lunch served in traditional banana leaf wrappers to save on packaging followed by a presentation by Eco Bali Recycling on the importance of recycling garbage and educating the children on techniques for identifying types of trash and separating them for recycling and the impact trash has on the environment.

Next up were the glass bottom boat rides which are always an overwhelming amount of fun, many of these kids would never normally have the opportunity to take a glimpse at the underwater world and get an idea of the beauty that’s below the waves, and everyone spotted a “Nemo!”

Then it was back to shore for refreshments and the 2015 Semawang Beach clean-up. The kids were separated in to teams and given the green and red trash bags from Eco Bali Recycling to separate the trash, then the teams scuttled away in different directions down the beach to collect all the low tide garbage and put their new found knowledge into practice.

After the bags of rubbish were loaded aboard the Eco Bali Recycling truck it was time for the Coral Triangle Center to do a presentation on coral reef ecosystems around Indonesia, focusing on the impact of overfishing and the importance of certain fish in the reef ecosystem as a whole. Coral Triangle Center put on a great show with many fun games and fishy props to keep the children entertained.

 Last but not least was the Earth Day Art competition, all the kids were given 30 mins to draw a picture of something fishy and planet related with the top 10 winners receiving fantastic prizes kindly donated by Divesport and Divemasters the SCUBA equipment wholesalers in Bali. The top 3 designs will be printed on cloth and paper bags to be used in All 4 Diving Indonesia’s 3 retail shops as part of a PADI Project AWARE no plastic campaign in Sanur.

And to wrap it up certificates were handed out to the kids and the traditional signing of the Earth Day 2015 banner. The whole event was an enormous amount of fun and we all hope that these kids will head home to spread this important new knowledge among friends and family, environmental conservation education at a grass roots level is an investment in our planets future.