Things You Can Do

Things You Can Do logo"Things You Can Do" is a massive social campaign that is first of its kind — a project that is entirely initiated by youth for youth. The campaign is organized by Raffles One Earth (the environmental club of Raffles Junior College) and mentored by the Environmental Challenge Organisation (Singapore), also known as ECO Singapore.

The campaign focuses on identifying the "7 Easy Green Habits", out of the thousands of them you can find online, that youth can start doing in school or at home for a start to lead a greener lifestyle.

7 Easy Green Habits

  1. Taking public transport
  2. Using refillable stationery
  3. Rejecting and reusing plastic bags
  4. Turning off electrical appliances completely off instead of standby mode
  5. Recycling paper
  6. Cutting down the use of water heaters
  7. Changing from air-con to fan, or setting the air-con temperature at 25 degrees or above.

Habits or practices that are circulated in the press are often not targeted at youth (e.g. buying a hybrid car), and hence would not be able to attract youth. Through the school talks and self-designed posters (which we believe are more engaging to youth than the boring old posters), the campaign hopes to reach out to youth more effectively.

Phase One

Over 30 schools hosted campaign speakers (18-year-old RJC students), who talked to audience members aged between 12 and 17 years old on environmental issues. Speakers interacted with audience members through a youth-orientated manner that promised to engage the audience better.

The highlight of the talks was the "7 Easy Green Habits" — lifestyle practices that are easy to be adopted by youth. By introducing these Green Habits, the campaign hoped that the tens of thousands of youth who participated in the talks would be agents of change by living green.

Phase Two

Volunteers headed down to the schools to carry out the evaluation of the students there and also find out the effectiveness of the school talks and posters, and whether the campaign was effective in influencing the mindsets of young people. The report of the study was presented to NGOs, like ECO Singapore, and governmental bodies, such as the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources and the National Environment Agency.

Finale

The final phase of the campaign was a conference titled "Conversation for Conservation". By bringing youth environmental leaders from various schools nation-wide, the conference hoped to serve as a platform for networking and collaboration between these youth leaders so that larger and more meaningful environmental projects could be developed and initiated.

Check out the finale event on Facebook.

Schools who are interested to be part of the campaign, please send us an email.

Volunteers of the Campaign

Things You Can Do volunteers

Main photo

What's Up!

[ 15 Nov 2008 3-5pm ]
Come for our Volunteer Induction Programme to find out how you can help!

Venue: ECO Sphere
87 Beach Road, Chye Sing Building, #06-01
(opposite Shaw Towers)

Nearest MRT station: Bugis

View map

Please fill in our form to join us!

 
 

More ECO links

We have a Facebook group! Join us now to learn how you can live a sustainable lifestyle too!

[ Join the ECO Singapore group on Facebook ]


Follow in the footsteps of our ECO Youth Champions as they remind the audience at National Day Parade 2008 to pick up their rubbish while enjoying the festivities.

[ Clear the rubbish with YouthSpeakUp-DunkIt-NDP ]


We are building EcOasis at the Science Centre Singapore. This house demonstrates how we can live in an environmentally sustainable manner.

[ Follow the progress of EcOasis ]


Our International Affairs delegation was the official Singapore representative at the UN 16th Commission on Sustainable Development.

[ Read about their trip and learnings from UN CSD 16 ]