In schools across Lebanon, environmental education often lives inside textbooks: recycling charts on classroom walls, science lessons about pollution, conversations that begin and end within a single period. But for a group of students and Fellows, climate awareness became something more tangible, something they could build, shape, and leave behind in their own schools.

These projects were not large-scale interventions. They did not rely on expensive infrastructure or complex resources. Instead, they were rooted in something quieter but equally important: student ownership. Through simple acts of planting, collecting, designing, and creating, students were invited to see themselves not just as learners, but as contributors to the spaces around them.

What emerged were projects that transformed ordinary school corners into visible reminders of responsibility, creativity, and collective care.

From Pipes to Plants

Hasbaya: Ein Jarfa Public School.

Led by Fellow Wafaa Al Hamra

Most school entrances are transitional spaces. Students pass through them every morning and afternoon without much notice. At Ein Jarfa Public School, Fellow Wafaa Al Hamra and her students decided that their entrance could become something more meaningful.

Using simple pipes repurposed as planters, students worked together to build a green installation at the front of the school. In total, they planted 57 plants, selecting and arranging them themselves. The materials were modest, but the process gave students something far more valuable than decoration: a sense of ownership.

Rather than inheriting a finished environment, students actively shaped it. That shift changed the way they related to the school and to one another. Collaboration became part of the experience. Classmates worked side by side, shared decisions, and saw their ideas become visible in a shared public space.

The entrance, once simply a place people moved through, became a space that invited attention and care. Students, teachers, and visitors continue to pass by it every day, carrying with them the reminder that even small changes can alter how a community feels about the spaces it inhabits.

Root for Tomorrow

Mount Lebanon: Al Abadiya Public School.

Led by Fellow Lama Abi Farraj

Plastic waste is easy to ignore once it leaves our hands. Fellow Lama Abi Farraj’s project at Al Abadiya Public School challenged students to confront that reality directly.

Working with 37 students from Grades 4, 7, and 8, the school’s environmental club collected discarded plastic waste and transformed it into a decorative wall display. While the final artwork became a visible feature within the school, the deeper value of the project came from the questions it encouraged students to ask.

Where does our waste go? Why do we throw things away so quickly? What responsibility do we carry for the materials we consume?

These are difficult conversations even for adults, yet the project made them immediate and personal for students. Instead of discussing waste in abstract terms, students handled it, sorted it, and reimagined it. Through the process, environmental awareness stopped being theoretical and became physical, visible, and impossible to overlook.

The wall display now stands as more than an art piece. It reflects a shift in perspective, a reminder that what we discard does not simply disappear, and that every choice we make leaves a trace behind.

Conclusion

What connects these projects is not only their environmental focus but the way they positioned students as active participants in shaping their communities. Whether through planting greenery at a school entrance or repurposing discarded plastic into something meaningful, students were given the opportunity to create visible change with their own hands.

In a context where many young people are growing up surrounded by uncertainty, these projects offered something deeply important: proof that their actions matter. The changes may seem small, a greener entrance, a wall installation made from waste, but their emotional impact reaches further. Students experienced collaboration, responsibility, pride, and the feeling of leaving something behind for others.

Climate leadership, in this sense, did not begin with grand solutions. It began with students learning that they can care for a space, influence a community, and imagine a different future for the world around them.