St. Maarten Regatta 5th Annual Beach Clean-Up

St. Maarten Regatta 5th Annual Beach Clean-up © St. Maarten Regatta

The St. Maarten Regatta organized the 5th Annual Beach Clean-up which took place on Saturday January 14th 2017. With over 100 participants this Beach Clean Up was the biggest one in 5 years. The day began with a beach clean-up, including a treasure hunt, a quiz presented by Tadzio Bervoets, Manager of the St. Maarten Nature Foundation and ended with 10 fun sports games guided by Les Brown, owner of LAB Sport Academy. The total of 86 bags of collected garbage were removed by Clean St. Maarten.

At 9AM Kim Sha Beach was filled with participants coming from LAB Sports Academy, Scouting Antiano, the K1 Britannia Foundation, Learning Unlimited, Charlotte Brookson Academy, CIA, St. Dominic Primary School, the St. Maarten Yacht Club, Oranje School and others. Students worked together in randomly assigned teams of 3 collecting as much garbage as possible in 30 minutes on Kim Sha Beach. The students collected 644.9 kilos of garbage. In order to test their creativity, the students were asked to look for a treasure during the clean-up. Nieske, Rachel and Natalie found the craziest object: a small bright pink keychain and won prizes sponsored by van Dorp and West Indies Sports Park.

After the clean-up, Tadzio Bervoets, explained all participants what the impact is of throwing waste into the sea. The knowledge of the children was tested by a Yes/No quiz where the children needed to move to the right field. The team that survived the longest, won the quiz part and received a prize sponsored by Tri Sports.

To close the day, the children battled against each other in ten sports games, beach soccer, Jeux de boules, ski run races and more, provided by LAB Sports. The sportiest group, a team that consisted of LAB Sports Academy and Scouting Antiano participants, won a Swing into Sunset' Cruise provided by Random Wind.

After all those activities, the prize giving took place. The children could earn points for the beach clean-up, the treasure hunt, the quiz and the sports games, which leaded to the overall winning team. The overall winners, Darnell, Emmanuela, Dauriel from Oranje School won flippers, to explore the now clean sea, provided by Ocean Explorers.

Participants enjoyed the water, drinks and other prizes sponsored by Divico, Fiji Water, Funtopia, Intertoys and the Scuba Shop.

"It was a wonderful day to test their knowledge, creativity, social skills and sportivity while enjoying some beach time," said Sacha van der Wouden, coordinator of this year's Beach Clean-Up. "The annual Beach Clean-up is a way for the Sint Maarten Regatta to give something back to the island. I'd like to thank everyone again for contributing to the event. I felt we made incredible progress; this is definitely a day to remember!"