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21 May 2020Eedama’s Live Workshops
Part of Eedama’s mission is to spread awareness, this is why we have taken the opportunity of this slow period to provide free live sessions on social media: They help reflect on negative environmental impact and improve it, and they allow spending educational and fun moments. Eedama has started holding weekly live workshops, and through these workshops, teaching more about sustainability. We cover various topics including upcycling, composting, gardening, upcycling DIY activities and much more.
During the first session, we discussed up-cycling; the process of converting old or discarded materials into something useful and often beautiful. Up-cycling gives an item a better purpose, in this example, it was transitioning an old t-shirt into a bag. Many old shirts cannot be recycled because their worn out materials are hard to recycle (and even if they can be, they often aren’t), therefore, in such case up-cycling is a better option. Finishing the live session, not only do you learn about up-cycling and its importance, but your old shirt is now a reusable bag too!
Eedama aims to tackle different topics that can be useful for everyone, which is why the next session was about composting, a topic for anyone interested in gardening. Composting is not very common knowledge, even though there are many benefits to it. So, what is compost? Compost looks like regular potting soil but in reality it is more than that. It’s a kind of dense soil: Rich natural fertilizer for plants that uses food waste. When vegetable and fruit scraps break down with the help of bacteria in the soil they decompose. With a little help from us, over time this mixture becomes compost. In this session, we discussed composting, a great organic fertilizer option, and showed you how to start your own, giving tips on how to take care of it.
Gardening is something we can start in our homes, no matter how much space or material is available. Not only is gardening calming, but so are the plants, and planting teaches us patience and responsibility. Decided you wanted to plant something, but you don’t have seeds, think again. We all have seeds in our homes, it’s only a matter of how to extract the seeds and save them, and we learned all about that in our next workshop. You can save different types of seeds from plants such as flowers, herbs, grains, and vegetables. While some seeds like basil are ready to be planted straight away, others like tomatoes need time, and in this workshop, we discuss the different processes of seed saving, and how to store them.
When it comes to space for the plants, you can get creative, and our next session shows you how. Vertical gardens are perfect for space and water saving. The session focused on the importance of vertical gardens, we discussed how great they look, in addition to how they help reduce the carbon footprint of a building. Exterior wall vertical gardens also help reduce heat absorption, which can result in significant energy savings in areas where people rely on air-conditioning during the warmer parts of the year. Our instructor proceeded slowly, showing how to create your own vertical garden using material you have at home.
Providing you with more educational and fun ideas, Eedama holds another up-cycling workshop. In this one, you learn how to up-cycle an old shoe box into a mini Foosball. This is a fun way to teach children about up-cycling and enhance their creativity. They can make this as decorative or as basic as they like, and can even add kit number to each of the pegs if they like. With each step, Eedama's instructor discusses up-cycling in more detail and gives more examples and ideas of things you could up-cycle in your home.
Gardening is something we can start in our homes, no matter how much space or material is available. Not only is gardening calming, but so are the plants, and planting teaches us patience and responsibility. Decided you wanted to plant something, but you don’t have seeds, think again. We all have seeds in our homes, it’s only a matter of how to extract the seeds and save them, and we learned all about that in our next workshop. You can save different types of seeds from plants such as flowers, herbs, grains, and vegetables. While some seeds like basil are ready to be planted straight away, others like tomatoes need time, and in this workshop, we discuss the different processes of seed saving, and how to store them.
When it comes to space for the plants, you can get creative, and our next session shows you how. Vertical gardens are perfect for space and water saving. The session focused on the importance of vertical gardens, we discussed how great they look, in addition to how they help reduce the carbon footprint of a building. Exterior wall vertical gardens also help reduce heat absorption, which can result in significant energy savings in areas where people rely on air-conditioning during the warmer parts of the year. Our instructor proceeded slowly, showing how to create your own vertical garden using material you have at home.
Providing you with more educational and fun ideas, Eedama holds another up-cycling workshop. In this one, you learn how to up-cycle an old shoe box into a mini Foosball. This is a fun way to teach children about up-cycling and enhance their creativity. They can make this as decorative or as basic as they like, and can even add kit number to each of the pegs if they like. With each step, Eedama's instructor discusses up-cycling in more detail and gives more examples and ideas of things you could up-cycle in your home.
Eedama’s free live program will continue till the end of school season and might extend to future advanced sessions. Our aim is to deliver sustainable messages to the community, starting with kids and moving up to adults. Eedama’s live sessions run twice a week, on both Facebook and Instagram, Wednesday’s in English, and Thursday’s in Arabic. Each week you can tune in, learn about sustainability, and take part in our workshop.
You can view all of our online workshops recordings here.
Mariam Radwan
Sustainability Instructor at Eedama.
