By: Juanita Cortes 10A

    Weigh anchors, sailors! For you are about to read the tale of five girls just like you who bravely faced the fierce tides of the Bogota River to represent our school in an amazing ecology competition. Last September 15, Abril Cano, María Alejandra Cervantes Juliana Morales, Mariana Benavides and Mariana Torres from ninth and tenth grade participated in an ecology competition created two years ago by La Sabana University; and here we are to tell you everything about it.

Since the first time our feet touched the school, we have learned the importance of taking care of our planet, our only home, by using science and innovation skills, and I cannot think of a better way of doing that than by participating in this activity. For the competition, the girls had to build a two-meter boat using only recyclable materials, and then make it work on the Bogota River with three girls on it. This year, the girls worked on the project for about two weeks and completed the challenge using PVC tubes, Tetra Pack boxes, duct tape, carton, and polystyrene vases. They got all the materials listed before from the recycling room of our school (you can find it next to lost and found.).

     When the official day of the competition arrived, September 15, they had already built the boat and were ready to prove their work had succeeded. Three girls from the team had to get on the boat and sail for four-hundred meters in competition against the other teams. Three different aspects were evaluated during the event: the time they took to sail through the four-hundred meters, the stability that the boat had, and the design they used. Aside from this, the theme of the competition was “Global Warming”; and on that day, some people had to dress up according to the situation; this is a very important aspect because it motivates the participants to get informed about this extremely important subject.

    Although the girls didn’t win, they did a great job and worked very hard on this. “This competition is a really great opportunity to develop all your creativity and all the different things we learn in school in a concrete way. It is a competitive event that really impulses you to give a 100% of yourself, but for me one of the most important thing is to have fun, to enjoy doing it and learn from what you are doing. Maybe we didn’t win the competition but we have a great story and a lot of experience to share”, said Abril Cano.

In order to participate in the competition, each school is allowed to have up to two teams, each one with 5 participants. Until now, there is only one team at our school, so if you want to be part of next year’s competition, you can talk to one of the girls I listed at the beginning of the article and they will help you. If you participate, you will not regret it.

    “In my opinion, this is a great opportunity that happens only once in a lifetime. It really helps you to learn and improve skills like teamwork; also, this activity can motivate you to recycle and to be conscious of the planet’s situation” stated the tenth-grade student and participant Maria Alejandra Cervantes. This competition is a great example of how we can do so much with so little, and that if we want to save our planet and make a change in the world, all we have to do is take what we think is the worst part of us, and turn it into an amazing tool to achieve our goals.