Every school term pen­na­cool.com, along with its spon­sors bpTT and Shell T&T, fa­cil­i­tates a Con­ser­va­tion Project Com­pe­ti­tion open to all pri­ma­ry school stu­dents.

Stu­dents are asked to build projects that dis­play or aid in any form of con­ser­va­tion or sus­tain­able prac­tices at home.

Je­re­mi­ah Malachi Omari Ram­goolam, ten, from Rio Claro, was one of five win­ning stu­dents in the Term 1 2021/2022 Sci­ence & Con­ser­va­tion Project Com­pe­ti­tion. He re­ceived $1,000 for his en­try, a mi­ni hy­dro­pon­ic sys­tem us­ing re­cy­cled ma­te­ri­als.

Pen­na­cool.com part­nered with bpTT and Shell T&T to de­vel­op the Sci­ence & Con­ser­va­tion pro­gramme with the goal of ed­u­cat­ing the coun­try's younger gen­er­a­tions on ac­tiv­i­ties that can help build a more sus­tain­able fu­ture.

BpTT and Shell T&T's shared vi­sion and goal of achiev­ing net ze­ro emis­sions and cre­at­ing more aware­ness among the pri­ma­ry school stu­dents cre­at­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for this part­ner­ship. The Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties al­so played a sig­nif­i­cant role with the pro­gramme ex­e­cu­tion, in ef­forts to pro­mote con­ser­va­tion prac­tices among youths.

Speak­ing to the Kids' Guardian Je­re­mi­ah said "I de­cid­ed to make the hy­dro­pon­ic sys­tem with re­cy­cled ma­te­ri­als be­cause it was easy to source, cost-ef­fec­tive and shows how we can be even more sus­tain­able.

"I did one be­fore as a class as­sign­ment in Stan­dard Three and so it was easy for me to de­cide on which project to do for the com­pe­ti­tion. We did look at some YouTube videos and then de­cid­ed what we were go­ing to do and how we would make it dif­fer­ent from the oth­er projects.

"I do have an in­ter­est in the en­vi­ron­ment and re­cy­cling, my fa­ther plants a lot of dif­fer­ent crops and my broth­ers and I spend a lot of our spare time with him in the gar­den."

He said they did not use many chem­i­cals to harm the en­vi­ron­ment.

The project was the per­fect fit for him since it in­clud­ed two things that he en­joyed; agri­cul­ture and re­cy­cling.

Je­re­mi­ah said that his favourite crop to grow was corn.

The Rio Claro Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School Stan­dard Four stu­dent's favourite sub­ject is Lan­guage Arts.

He en­joys play­ing crick­et with his broth­ers, his favourite food is Cre­ole rice or hill rice with salt­fish cook up and his favourite dessert is home­made sponge cake.

Je­re­mi­ah en­joys look­ing at doc­u­men­taries such as Life Be­low Ze­ro, Sur­vival Man and many dif­fer­ent an­i­mal doc­u­men­taries.

When he grows up he wants to help oth­ers; he wants to be a male nurse or a fire­fight­er just like his dad.

Ryan Chaitram, Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er, bpTT said that Je­re­mi­ah’s project was a per­fect ex­am­ple of learn­ing in ac­tion and as a part­ner, bpTT was thrilled to see stu­dents ap­ply what they learned from us­ing the Pen­na­cool.com plat­form in the area of sci­ence and con­ser­va­tion.

He ex­plained the plat­form was help­ing stu­dents to de­vel­op a good foun­da­tion in the ar­eas of sci­ence and con­ser­va­tion which was im­por­tant to be able to tack­le the is­sues their gen­er­a­tion may face in the fu­ture.

Phaes­suh Krom­ah, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor, Pen­na­cool.com shared that the or­gan­i­sa­tion's mem­bers had seen not on­ly the aca­d­e­m­ic skills of Je­re­mi­ah, but his pas­sion and ded­i­ca­tion to do­ing some­thing that he tru­ly en­joyed, like plant­i­ng.

Krom­ah felt it was fas­ci­nat­ing to see a stu­dent of such a young age pos­sess­ing the abil­i­ty to teach oth­ers the con­ser­v­a­tive prac­tices dis­played in his hy­dro­pon­ic sys­tem that had gone vi­ral on so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

He said they were be­yond ec­sta­t­ic to be a part of Je­re­mi­ah's jour­ney and looked for­ward to even greater achieve­ments from him.

Tri­cia Ec­cles-Ram­goolam, Je­re­mi­ah's moth­er, re­vealed that her son was a very de­ter­mined and dri­ven child who loved to work out in the gar­den with his fam­i­ly and rel­a­tives.

She said telling him he can­not go to the gar­den was worse than pun­ish­ment for him.

Ian Ram­goolam, Je­re­mi­ah's fa­ther, de­scribed him as very car­ing child who en­joyed play­ing and spend­ing time with his broth­ers.

Je­re­mi­ah, he said, was al­so very ded­i­cat­ed to com­plet­ing his school as­sign­ments on time.