The GLOBE Club of Brazil Sec­ondary School is mak­ing waves.

In Ju­ly 2023, the club was nom­i­nat­ed for a Na­tion­al Youth Award in the cat­e­go­ry of “En­vi­ron­men­tal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Preser­va­tion: Prac­tic­ing and Ad­vo­cat­ing the ideals of en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and preser­va­tion.” The club was giv­en the award of ex­cel­lence in this cat­e­go­ry for work on its hy­dro­pon­ics gar­den, hum­ming­bird gar­den, but­ter­fly gar­den, and Bioscan Project.

The club was es­tab­lished in 2007 to raise en­vi­ron­men­tal sen­si­tiv­i­ty and en­cour­age per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the preser­va­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment.

Dri­ven by stu­dents, the club is guid­ed by Mrs Rosh­ni Madoo (Bi­ol­o­gy Teacher III) and Mr Kameel Mo­hammed Ali (Lab Tech­ni­cian).

Dai­ly mem­bers col­lect tem­per­a­ture and rain­fall da­ta. This in­for­ma­tion is up­loaded to be used by sci­en­tists around the world. The club re­ceived an award from GLOBE In­ter­na­tion­al in 2014 for hav­ing sub­mit­ted the most da­ta in the en­tire world for that year.

In 2008 and 2014 the club rep­re­sent­ed T&T in the Glob­al Learn­ing Ex­pe­di­tion in South Africa and New Del­hi re­spec­tive­ly.

In 2018 the club be­came part of PAN (Pro­tect and Nur­ture) Trinidad and To­ba­go, an um­brel­la body for en­vi­ron­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions. One of the first ini­tia­tives of PAN was the “Go Green, Not Poly­thene” cam­paign. This cam­paign was launched from the Brazil Sec­ondary School. The pur­pose of this ini­tia­tive was to sen­si­tise the pub­lic to the dan­gers of one-use plas­tics and en­cour­age the use of reusable bags/con­tain­ers.

 The 3Rs in Ac­tion was the next PAN ini­tia­tive which en­cour­aged schools from across T&T to prac­tice re­cy­cling. This was host­ed by the club. An­oth­er PAN com­mu­ni­ty out­reach, tar­get­ing food se­cu­ri­ty, is planned for March 2024 and will oc­cur in Brazil Vil­lage.

The club has par­tic­i­pat­ed in NASA’s Grow­ing Be­yond the Earth Project. In this project stu­dents from around the world were pro­vid­ed with scaled-down ver­sions of the grow­ing cham­ber found on the In­ter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. The stu­dents were asked to grow veg­eta­bles in this cham­ber un­der set pa­ra­me­ters over six weeks. This da­ta was then sent to NASA to de­ter­mine the best con­di­tions to grow the veg­eta­bles. The club was one of on­ly two schools in the Caribbean to par­tic­i­pate in this project.

In April 2022 the GLOBE Club launched its on­line mag­a­zine, the Brazil Nut which high­light the ac­tiv­i­ties of the club and all stu­dents in the school.

Brazil Sec­ondary School is lo­cat­ed in Brazil Vil­lage, a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty, which prac­tices tra­di­tion­al farm­ing prac­tices.

 One of the key rea­sons for the con­trac­tion of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor is the lack of in­ter­est of the young peo­ple in this sec­tor. In Sep­tem­ber 2022 the GLOBE Club, recog­nis­ing this, es­tab­lished a hy­dro­pon­ics gar­den which serves to demon­strate new and al­ter­na­tive agri­cul­tur­al tech­niques. This gar­den is a small area en­closed by a chain-linked fence. The mem­bers de­lib­er­ate­ly chose a rel­a­tive­ly small space to demon­strate how to max­imise pro­duc­tion in lim­it­ed spaces by us­ing al­ter­na­tive agri­cul­tur­al tech­niques. This gar­den boasts of (i) a ver­ti­cal aero­pon­ics sys­tem, (ii) a sharp sand grow box, (iii) a trel­lis sys­tem, (iv) a deep-wa­ter hy­dro­pon­ic sys­tem, (v) grow bags and (vi) a ver­mi­com­post­ing bin. The gar­den is pro­duc­ing can­taloupes, cu­cum­bers, cab­bage, pak­choi, cel­ery, chive, cau­li­flower, drag­on fruit, beets and straw­ber­ries.

 The ver­mi­com­post­ing bin pro­duces worm tea which is used as a nat­ur­al fer­tilis­er and fungi­cide for the crops in the gar­den. Mem­bers of the club col­lab­o­rat­ed with Cube Root Farms to set up the ver­mib­in. Veg­etable peel­ings from the school’s cafe­te­ria are used to feed the worms. The club in­tends to in­vite pupils from the sur­round­ing pri­ma­ry schools to view the mod­el gar­den. A men­tor­ship pro­gramme is be­ing planned to as­sist in the es­tab­lish­ment of sim­i­lar gar­dens in these pri­ma­ry schools.

The GLOBE Club has es­tab­lished a hum­ming­bird gar­den on the school’s com­pound. This project was in re­sponse to a sig­nif­i­cant drop in the bird pop­u­la­tions vis­it­ing the school.

The club is cur­rent­ly in­volved in the Bioscan Project with the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and the BES-Net.tt (Bio­di­ver­si­ty and Ecosys­tem Ser­vices Net­work Trinidad and To­ba­go). The GLOBE Club was in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in this project be­cause of their in­volve­ment with the Min­istry’s Pol­li­na­tor’s Project. The mem­bers al­so es­tab­lished a but­ter­fly gar­den on the school com­pound to in­crease the but­ter­fly pop­u­la­tion.

The club recog­nis­es that more pol­li­na­tors re­sult in greater food pro­duc­tion. The Bioscan Project seeks to iden­ti­fy the bio­di­ver­si­ty of in­sects. The GLOBE club is the on­ly school par­tic­i­pat­ing in this project. Every week mem­bers of the club col­lect the spec­i­mens which are caught in the Malaise Trap. These spec­i­mens are then frozen and shipped to Cana­da, where they are iden­ti­fied by gene se­quenc­ing.

The GLOBE Club con­tin­ues to en­gage in ac­tiv­i­ties to spark the falling in­ter­est in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and to pre­serve the wildlife be­ing ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by progress.