“When the Virtual Reality video started, I first thought ‘wow there are a lot of weird fishes in that sea!’ But it turned out to be plastic and it was everywhere you could watch. I didn’t know that all our plastic waste goes directly into the oceans. And the worst thing I saw next was that all the fishes and turtles eat it and die.

One day, I will be a scuba diver but in a clean ocean together with my (sea-)friends and that’s why we have chosen to save the animals and the natural environment. In Kenya, you have to go to jail when you walk across the street with a plastic bag. And in our country we use a huge amount of plastic every day. Together with the ABCs in the connected country we encourage everyone to stop buying plastic products and ‘Avoiding plastic is really cool!’ is our motto.”

“The video from our connected ABC school showed us the detrimental effects of palm oil on their environment, wildlife and community. We were determined to help our ABC-friends and discovered that palm oil is found in most packaged
supermarket food as well as in cosmetics, toothpaste, etc. Due to lack of labelling (‘vegetable oil’), we wouldn’t even know we were using it! We even found out that much of Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) was combined with non-sustainable palm oil and sold as ‘containing’ sustainable palm oil.

We completely stopped using palm oil, and convinced many stores to stop selling these products. Because, if the demand for palm oil will not slow, there are no rainforests left by 2022.”

“At first we did not know if we could be of use to ABC Project, but when ABC connected us with the children in the African country far away, we knew immediately what to do! They couldn’t read and had no books. That’s why we made books with self-made text and drawings which we sent them. And through the live connection we helped with reading and counting every week. Meanwhile, they learned us a lot about their culture and animal kingdom..the giraffes just looked through the window of their school! We could see them live!!”

“Not able to join ABC Project because schools don’t have electricity? Everyone must be able to participate in a project that works on solutions for a better world! Therefore, we used our knowledge about sustainable technologies and installed solar panels on the roofs of the foreign school. During the live stream everyone in our university was present when they got light for the first time. A unique experience for both countries! Our ABC friends noticed that we had a lot of lights in our school, so now everyone turns off unnecessary lights.”