Einwot Juon – A Local Campaign Against Waste

For the past 3 years, Jo-Jikum has been a recipient of the Pacific People Advancing Change (PPAC) programme, which provides mentorship, workshops, and small grants for Pacific civil society organizations to create programming with human rights at its core.

Through this grant program, the campaign “Einwot Juon: Kadriklok Kobej Kaloplok Iakwe” came to be. The campaign, which loosely translates to “No Need: Less Trash More Love” was a campaign meant to encourage Marshallese residents to say “no need” to single-use plastics and paper bags, and to promote reusable options instead. The campaign is also a coalition led by Marshall Islands Conservation Society (MICS) in partnership with Jo-Jikum, Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority (MIMRA), Majuro Atoll Local Government, Marshall Islands Visitors Authority (MIVA), and others. The video above is one of the promotional items that were developed during the campaign, thanks to our friends Voices Rising

This grant so far has been managed previously by our Program Manager alongside an intern. Jollia Peter and Jobod Silk (our former Intern who is now our Youth Coordinator) helped go door to door to promote reusable bags. They also tabled outside of grocery stores, collecting surveys on people’s awareness of reusable bags and reusable utensils, and played an active role in developing most of the campaign materials – designing the campaign informational flier, coordinating and acting in tiktok and campaign videos.

2021 Campaign

During this past year’s campaign, we decided to focus more on the waste management aspect of the campaign. We focused our efforts on littering in public parks, which has been recognized as a problem within our community for many years. Our solution was simple: build trash bins that make it easier for park goers to dispose of their trash. These bins were designed by our intern, Eleas Beaj, built by a local construction company, and painted by youth community artists Debbie Schutz and Geovannie Johnson. The campaign included collecting surveys from park-goers about waste management at parks, coordinating the construction and painting of the 4 trash bins, and the eventual installation of the bins that included a community cleanup.

In addition to these outreach events the interns also worked on promotional radio ads and videos which helped spread the message to our Marshallese audience. Check out their “glow up” tiktok below created by our interns and the video filmed by Chewy Lin based off of a radio ad originally created by local radio station 103.5.