PASS ON THE GOOD THINGS

If one person does something good, then others will follow. I had had this dream for ages. I knew that I wasn’t the smartest person on earth but when it came to doing something for the sake of the sea animals, I knew I’d do something important one day. Dr Jake Millen is a marine biologist at the aquarium of San  Francisco.

One day I met him while I was giving a scuba diving lesson to a group of teenagers. I was showing them the sea animals like sharks, jellyfish, and different types of octopus. They were really into dangerous or poisonous animals and they liked to get frightened a little bit by the sharks.

When I had finished the lesson, I decided to speak to Dr Millen and share my ideas with him. In my opinion, being a volunteer should be the first thing that we need to spread around: a volunteer for life. You shouldn’t need anybody to tell you not to throw rubbish on the street or into the sea, and nobody should need to be warned about using so many plastic bottles. These are things we should all know.

“Hi, my name’s Jane and I’d like to volunteer to help you and your team,” I said. “I have always been keen on learning everything about the sea, and I want to do something to help clean up the seas, and make people more aware of the problem of pollution in our oceans. Perhaps I can talk to the kids who come to learn how to scuba dive, and educate them about how to keep our oceans clean.” Dr Millen liked my idea and asked me to run a campaign to educate people, starting with the teenagers I was teaching.

Now, we have started a campaign for reducing pollution in the oceans with people of all ages. After they have completed the course, I train my students to find three people every week to educate them on how to keep their environment and the seas clean. We provide the training for free and the only rule is to find someone to pass on the goodwill.