Cleaner is Greener!

The Freetown Primary School in Freetown, Clarendon, will be the venue for this year's Biodiversity Expo. It will be held this Friday from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The Biodiversity Expo is the result of a partnership between the Natural History Museum of Jamaica (NHMJ) in partnership with Highway 2000 East-West.

This year, under the theme 'Cleaner is Greener: Making Gardening Work for You', schools and organisations that have participated in the Biodiversity Awareness Programme will get an opportunity to mount displays on topics such as Health and Wellness, Food Security, as well as demonstrate awareness of Jamaica's biodiversity through a school competition.

This Biodiversity Awareness Programme began in 2011 at the Chandler's Pen Primary and Junior High School in Chateau, Clarendon, and since then some of the major outcomes of the project are biodiversity-related activities such as entrepreneurship and the creation of value-added products through medicinal gardens and composting.

The programme has since been expanded to the Freetown Primary School, Moores Primary and Infant School, Rosewell Primary School, and Independence City Primary School in the Clarendon and St Catherine region. Chandler's Pen Primary and Junior High has further benefited from the construction of a Biodiversity Resource Centre. Schools in proximity to Highway 2000 East-West were given the opportunity to develop a school garden populated with plants of their choice under the Biodiversity Awareness Programme.