Schools that participated in the Coca-Cola change on environmental behaviour campaign in the chase for games or sports merchandise dubbed Recycle with Coca Cola has been alarmed over the delay of honouring and giving prizes to deserving schools.
Last year, the beverage company launched the campaign involving Copa Coca-Cola 2019 participating secondary school students, educating them on the importance of a cleaner environment by taking care of plastics disposal.
The winning schools from each region, their playing pitches were to be revamped and the prizes were determined by the school that achieved the highest number of kilos over the tournament period which ran from May to July 2019.
On July 4th 2019 the company wrote on its official twitter handle: “We are conducting a recycling campaign to impact behaviour change in relation to plastic disposal in Kenya. The campaign will see the top four schools with the highest collection of PET bottles win a pitch and the rest of the participating schools receive games/sports merchandise amounting to the number of plastics collected. The national initiative is educating teens the impotence of recycling for a litter-free environment.”
But since the campaign was concluded, games teachers are asking for their rewards but the company went silent, yet they are facing questions from the participating students on what had happened.
Among the schools include Mwiruti Mixed secondary school, Umoja Mixed secondary all from Uasin Gishu.
Mwiruti’s Fredrick Owino claimed they had all met the required measures to earn the prize but all has been in vain, waiting for something that we can’t tell what will happen.
“Having led my students in a competition, to win a pitch for our school am greatly concerned about the silence from the company. Since winners were declared, they went silent,” claimed Owino. ‘
According to the reports, Mwiruti collected 9,359kgs and were entitled to earn school legacy pitch, goal posts, nets, corner flags, scoreboards and players’ bibs but all that has been in waiting.
“ The same fate other colleagues across the country who led their students in this competition have been put to a state where school administration, students and the communities around the schools wonder what the competition was for if the rewards aren’t forthcoming. We thank coca-cola management for the exercise and support of soccer in schools but we’re astonished at what is happening after the completion and announcement of the winners. I hereby urge the company to act on the rewards so that students may enjoy what they worked for,” he said.
He added that the refurbishment of the pitches ought to have started a long time ago together with other awards such as goal posts, goal nets and other awards as promised by coca-cola company.
The national campaign saw top schools in the country win the accolades that they are still waiting.
In the first category, there were the winners of goalposts nets, corner flags and player bibs where Umoja Mixed secondary school in Rift Valley region collected 7,390kgs, Kisumu Boys from Western collected 509ks, Nyanza’s Nyarua Secondary collected 2,932kgs while Raila Odinga Educational Centre from Nairobi region making up with 2.294kgs.
The best categories were in the second pool where the winners were to benefit from the legacy pitch, goal posts, nets, corner flags, scoreboards and player bibs.
In this category, Mwiruti of Rift Valley collected the highest number of bottles amounting to 9,359kgs, Western’s Nyang’o’ri collecting 2,048kgs, Bishop Okul Girls of Nyanza with 3,963kgs and Mutuini High school from Nairobi with 3,174kgs.