TODAY, more than one billion people around the world will take part in the 43rd anniversary of Earth Day.  This year’s theme for Earth Day is The Face of Climate Change.  From Georgetown to

Cairo, Melbourne to London, Rio to Johannesburg, individuals, communities, organisations, and governments everywhere are voicing their concerns for the planet and taking action to protect it.
In April 2012, the U.S. Embassy, together with several diplomatic and civic partners including the British High Commission, the Canadian High Commission, the European Union Delegation in Guyana, Conservation International Guyana, and Youth Challenge Guyana, announced plans to collaborate on a project known as Guyana Shines.  Guyana Shines was launched on Earth Day last year and our work has never stopped since then.  Our motivation and our goal in creating Guyana Shines was to encourage and mobilize citizens, communities, and especially young Guyanese to address the serious littering problem and take action to protect and preserve Guyana’s environment.  We seek to encourage and promote changes in attitudes and behavior that can transform Guyana’s capital city and make it once again the Garden City of the Caribbean.
Over the past year, Guyana Shines volunteers — including Lion’s Club members, University of Guyana students, diplomats, and many more concerned groups and individuals — visited nearly 60 primary and secondary schools in the Georgetown area.  Over 50 volunteers from community and school organisations have been part of this outreach effort.  They have delivered presentations to thousands of students to increase their awareness of the harmful effects of littering and pollution and to encourage them to make environmentally sound choices in their lives.  We believe that education is the key to developing attitudes that will lead to sustainable change that can overcome litter and other environmental pollution.
Our volunteers spoke with students about  the choices they can make in their daily lives to make a difference, from organising school environmental projects and reducing what they consume, to reusing products whenever they can and setting up recycling activities at their schools. We met with several school snack vendors to encourage them to use environmentally-friendly biodegradable containers. It is our hope that we have been able to connect with students, raise their awareness about littering, encourage them to exercise more care and thoughtfulness, and to be personally responsible and committed not to litter.  We have found Guyana’s young people to be knowledgeable and receptive to this message, and eager to share it with their parents, siblings, and friends.
We also supported projects to build community activism and responsibility and bring citizens together who care about their environment and are willing to do something to protect it.  Guyana Shines volunteers worked with communities in Lodge, Tucville, East La Penitence, and Festival City to clean up neighbourhoods and make them shine.  Guyana Shines donated rakes, hoes, wheelbarrows, brooms, and gloves to support these communities in their efforts to clean up the streets – and to keep them clean.  In one case, over 40 volunteers from Guyana Shines organizations, Habitat for Humanity, the University of Guyana’s EcoTrust Society, Scotia Bank, Youth Media Guyana, the Marian Academy, and the Rotary Club of Georgetown Central joined in a community clean-up.  Guyana Shines partners also joined forces with students, staff, and parents from the Marian Academy on a special project to build a recycling shed at the school.  This is precisely the kind of civic volunteerism that Guyana Shines seeks to promote.  At the end of the day, it is up to the citizens of Guyana to come together and take the action to enhance their communities and their country.
Education and civic action can and will make a difference.  But these steps also need to be supported and reinforced by collaborative efforts of the Government of Guyana, the City of Georgetown, and the private sector to address the core structural challenges in solid waste disposal, garbage collection, and enforcement.  We welcome the recent unanimous resolution in the National Assembly to restore Georgetown and the subsequent creation of four joint committees to address the technical issues surrounding the issue.  The Ministry of the Environment’s Pick-It-Up Campaign, stepped up enforcement efforts, and moves to encourage recycling also represent valuable contributions to a lasting national drive to build a litter-free environment.
A clean Georgetown in an environmentally pristine Guyana is not an impossible goal.  Other countries around the world and within the Caribbean region have faced similar challenges and undertaken similar actions to overcome them.  With a genuine commitment to change and a broadened spirit of national cooperation among government, civil society, and the private sector, we are confident that the government and people of Guyana can seize this moment for real transformation in Guyana.
(US EMBASSY RELEASE)