^{We publish this picture with the permission of the childrens' parents. Thank you Yousre for translating the paper into Arabic.}

In our discussions, two environmental challenges kept coming up. One observation was, that young people buy quite a lot of clothes. Some of them are cheap and don't last very long, others are soon forgotten in the drawer. Another observation was the tremendous amount of food waste that we produce in our households and generally in society. We learned, that the amount of food waste is tolerable at our school canteen, except for the special diets. When there is something delicious on offer, some students temporarily forget, that they are vegan, and there is food left over. Each of us have observed, that despite efforts against it, there is often some food going bad in our own refrigerators. We decided to tackle this.



^{This is our advertisemet for the event. It asks: "Did you hoard too much?"}

On Monday, December 12th we organised a "waste food day" at our school. In cooperation of our cookery class teacher we called for students to enroll for cooking with us from 10-12 o'clock and to bring any food from
home, that was in danger of going bad - such as sprouting carrots or last year's berries from the fridge. Unfortunately, no one enrolled, so we asked for participants from two schools for children with special needs and another upper secondary school in the region. It was on too short notice this time, but we agreed to develope something together in spring. In the end, we asked our little friends, who are seeking asylum in Finland. They embraced the proposition with shiny eyes!

Our students went around in stores describing our event and asking for sponsors. One store and a kiosk gave us bags and cardboard boxes full of food, candy, crisps, chocolate, pastries, energy bars, milk, coffee, yogurt and what not! Both of these sponsors want to continue working with us.


^{Saving food from the bin at our stand in the school lobby.}

The ready food was given to students for free, and most of it was gone within 10 minutes. The students could donate some money for an environmental cause, but this was voluntary. Our main goal was to raise awareness. We saw a lot of happy faces on this day! On the 12th of December the test week was about to begin, and the students had a lot of learning to do. The snacks were welcome for sure! A big thank you to our sponsors!


^{This is a compilation that we made as a thank you to our sponsor.}

The friendly entrepreneur from the kiosk also brought last christmas' rutabaga casserole from home, which we turned into a bread. Her ham casserole was turned into a salty pie, adding some leftover cheese etc.

We spent three hours baking with our adorable Iraqui and Kurdish friends. It was a lot of fun and there were a lot of chocolaty, smiling faces!