Bern, 15 June 2012 The winning drawings from the Swiss “Treasure House Earth” competition will be exhibited at the World Resources Forum, to be held in Beijng, China, from October 21-23, 2012. This was announced by Bas de Leeuw, Managing Director of the WRF at the occasion of the award ceremony, held in Bern.

The annual environmental drawing contest received over 3,500 entries from school classes from all over Switzerland, made by children from 7-16 years old. Representatives of the winning classes, their teachers and parents participated in the award ceremony, organised by SQS (Swiss Association for Quality and Management Systems, partner of the WRF), and was also supported by the Sarasin Bank.

Silvio Leonardi, member of the Executive Board of SQS, opened the ceremony, and thanked all children and the jury for their efforts. Rene Wasmer of SQS and Marco Scheurer of Sarasin presented the awards. 

“Protecting the resources of our Earth can only be done”, Bas de Leeuw said, ” if we all cooperate. You, children, do not build factories, or drive cars or work in a power plant, but you can do a lot already: talk about the issue with your parents, learn about it at school, and then later, when you get your jobs, do things better than we have been doing so far”.

And he said that for him personally his interest in the environment had started when he was 13 years old and was asked to make a drawing of an oil-polluted sea duck, victim of an oil spill. “Drawing that animal meant getting close to it, and wanting to protect it”.

Xaver Edelmann, President of the WRF, was one of the jury members. All nominated drawings can be found here.