Dubai Municipality honoured 2 student under Ambassadors of Sustainability Programme

Ambassadors of Sustainability

Eng. Salah Amiri, Assistant Director-General of the Dubai Municipality (DM), recently honoured students from the Dubai National School and Zayed University under the “Ambassadors of Sustainability Programme” for their outstanding projects and suggestions pertaining to most sustainable ways of collection and disposal of waste.

Maryam Khalid from the Dubai National School presented her sustainable project on promoting the role of families in residential areas for eco-friendly waste management, while Fatima Al Marzooqi from Zayed University spoke about her idea about effective collection of waste from vehicles.

“‘Ambassadors of Sustainability’ is a unique programme the Dubai Municipality has been implementing, in collaboration with educational institutions aiming to train students who are interested to work for sustainable environment and waste management activities across the emirate,” said Eng. Abdul Majeed Saifaie, Director of the waste management department at DM.

According to Saifaie, DM has separate training packages for secondary and higher secondary school students as well as for college students. After systematic training they will be qualified as “Ambassador(s) of Sustainability” and will be deployed to conduct lectures, workshops and to carry out field visits to targeted institutions.

Hamda Al Murr, head of sustainable waste management team at DM, said, “The civic body is now  awarding qualified students with ‘Ambassador of Sustainability’  certificates. We train them on how to speak and debate on various environment matters. Those who prove their ability will be given training on how to convert waste items to useful objects.”

According to Hussain Ghulam, Head of Administrative Support and Customers Section, a total of 40 government and 20 private entities joined the initiative where the number of ambassadors reached 200 from these schools. Moreover, 2,000 students benefited from the workshops organised on different occasions.

“A lot of new ideas and wonderful projects in sustainable waste management have been created by the effective participation of students such as the tyre park and producing organic compost from organic waste,” said Ghulam.