The company Milk-Agro is opening the seventeenth year of the competition Recycle and Win. We reminisced a bit with Mrs. PaedDr. Silvia Baranova, who is considered almost a pioneer of this popular competition...
You have been participating in the competition for many years. How did you start?
Over seventeen years, I have participated in the competition about twelve times with breaks. So practically since its beginning. I first started the competition at the Primary School in Kračúnovce. I worked there as an art and history teacher, and I also had a creative club with children. We participated in various competitions with children's artworks and even won some, but the prizes we received could not be compared to the prizes from the Recycle and Win competition. It was a matter of effort and work compared to what the children received as a reward. I studied the competition rules in detail and launched it among children and parents.
Which rewards pleased and motivated the most?
Both pupils and parents were very excited when at the end of the school year they saw me looking like Santa Claus, handing out many gifts. From the winning vouchers from Milk-Agro, we bought lots of things for pupils, classrooms, and offices. The prizes were impressive, first MP3 players, then computers, electric scooters... When you give out such prizes at the end of the year, you become the most popular teacher at school (laughs).
But you had to "work hard" first...
Yes, those who haven't tried it can't imagine what kind of work it is. The first thing is to motivate people to understand what it is about and then find space at school for storage, find willing colleagues and enough helpers to help with full bags of Tetra Paks... There were times when I weighed those bags myself and dragged them on a wheelbarrow with a group of pupils. It was a lot of work. But from the beginning, I saw that it was a very interesting competition and that the effort was worth it...
Did the children understand that it was not just about scooters...?
Of course. Although the prizes are very interesting and – let's be honest – very motivating, I was glad that our children understood what the whole competition was about, that they were saving the environment. We taught them how to live healthily, that they should eat healthy things. They also learned that we should consume foods from our region, that cows are raised here from which we get milk, and that yogurts made from this milk taste good and are beneficial to health.
You inspired not only children but also their relatives, how did you manage that?
Children could not do it without relatives. Everyone collected – pupils, parents, relatives, even from several districts, and also people who had nothing to do with the school but liked SABI products and collected caps and Tetra Paks for us. People appreciated that the competition combines valuable prizes with the valuable idea of recycling and environmental protection. This combination is very motivating.
The idea interests many, but they don't know how to do it practically. Will you reveal some "tricks"?
When I previously taught at a private primary school in Giraltovce, I arranged with the Milk-Agro store manager nearby to place a box where customers could drop caps from yogurts and other SABI products, and I collected them. I constantly improved motivation. Once I had a huge poster with all the classes of our school, and we competed not only as a whole school but also between classes. On that poster, I wrote preliminary numbers. You should have seen the excitement and competitiveness! Each class had a list of individual pupils, and class teachers wrote preliminary numbers of how many caps each had. So after the competition ended and results were announced, children knew exactly who won and who placed to receive an interesting prize. They knew that those who tried hard and were diligent and hardworking won because numbers and grams decided, and those are precise. Many other competitions, especially art ones, are judged subjectively, simply by jury members agreeing on what they like. But that doesn't mean everyone likes it. In the Recycle and Win competition, numbers decide, and they are precise (laughs). In my opinion, it is a competition worth it and has a future because of the ideas it spreads.
Thank you for the interview.
