E-Land, PSS strengthen partnership for environment

E-Land executives, Public School System officials, principals, teachers, and students pose for a group photo at an opening ceremony for the Environmental Youth Alliance Program on Wednesday at the Kensington Hotel. The program promotes environmental conservation and environmental awareness and helps youths grow as global environmental leaders. (Bea Cabrera)

A year after the E-Land Youth Environmental Alliance Program was launched, the partnership between the South Korea conglomerate and the Public School System is focusing on encouraging students to act to preserve the environment.

The program had a ceremony commemorating its second year last Wednesday at Kensington Hotel in San Roque, attended by E-Land executives, PSS officers, school principals, teachers, and students.

The program aims to encourage environmental clubs in the grade and high school levels of PSS to come up with ways to help preserve and protect the environment by funding the projects and making sure that the students achieve their goals.

According to Jieun Ko, E-Land Corporate Social Responsibility manager, each environmental club went through documentation, interviews, and evaluations last week and the top 10 schools were selected to pursue environmental projects and plans.

“Last year E-land supported three environmental clubs from PSS. This year, we expanded the program to 10 environmental clubs and to non-public schools. Each club will get $500 every month starting today until next year to help them pursue their environmental projects,” she said.

E-Land CEO and president Matthew Park said that student leaders play a crucial role in solving environment problems.

“There were many good projects proposed by each school such as beach cleaning or Adopt-a-Beach project, coral watch, recycling, tree planting, awareness campaign, and so forth.

“There is no doubt that these projects will bring us a real changes in both short- and long-term periods. I wish the students all the success in transforming their ideas into tangible outcomes that will make a positive difference to the people of the CNMI,” said Park.

The program’s participating schools are William S. Reyes, Koblerville, and Kagman elementary schools, Hopwood and Chacha Oceanview middle schools, Kagman, Saipan Southern, and Marianas (Conservation Plan Action Committee and My Wave) high schools, and Mount Carmel School.

Acting Education commissioner Glen Muña said the partnership with E-Land started a year ago and the company is looking at ways on how they can help PSS.

“It started with putting up bus stops and, from there, it expanded to community events. This shows the community that the children care about the environment and they care about the place that they live in,” he said.

“I support the children and I hope everyone in the community supports their efforts as well. I look forward to more partnerships like this, not only with E-Land but also with other businesses,” Muña added.

E-Land is a key partner in the CNMI’s efforts to help protect the environment. They also help with the projects and programs of the Micronesia Islands Nature Alliance.

“We are living on Saipan and we are doing business here. One of the things why we are here is because we fell in love with the natural beauty of Saipan. With that, I feel we need to help conserve and protect the environment,” Park said.

“E-Land will continue to support students’ environmental activities,” he added.