One morning last February, students of Brazil Secondary walked to the back of their school to find that the greenhouse they’d spent weeks constructing — a key part of a project that would go on to win the top prize at this year’s RBC Royal Bank Young Leaders competition — had been almost completely destroyed by heavy rainfall the night before.

The transparent plastic roof, weighed down by water, had caved in on the tomato and sweet pepper plants below. The PVC pipe frame draped in black mesh had almost collapsed.

“Everything was like an upside-down umbrella,” said Hematee Sookdeo, president of Brazil’s Young Leaders team.

Adding to the nightmare, this was the day that a flood of visitors was expected to view the project, which had been publicized by the team. People from the community and environs were due to begin arriving in a few hours.

“It come like we had to start over again,” team member Randy Sookoo recalled.

The modest, hut-sized greenhouse was one of many parts of an ambitious project on the competition theme "Water: Beyond the Surface — Sustaining Life, Securing Our Future."

Brazil’s presentation included a hydroponic (soil-less) grow box; a system that directed school wastewater to the tank servicing the greenhouse and grow box; an essay competition and costumed mascot to help promote water conservation among primary school students; fundraising; a thick, well-kept and extravagantly decorated journal; and a game board-sized model of the project.

The damaged greenhouse wasn’t the only near-death experience for a project that tested the students’ organizational skills and perseverance. But Brazil students had caught the whiff of victory the year before, when they placed third the first time they’d entered. They were determined not to let success slip out of their hands this time.

“We said this year we have to come first!” said team secretary Shyann Hernandez as a handful of team members gathered recently in the school’s biology lab.

Today, the greenhouse and the grow box, which are adjacent to each other, are bare — the crops have been harvested for now.

But the posters bearing information about hydroponics still hang on a wall nearby. The journal and model hold pride of place near the entrance of the bio lab; the carcass of the mascot is propped up in the opposite corner. The silver-cup challenge trophy towers above many others for sports and cultural activities in the principal’s cramped office.

Along the walls of a four-foot-wide corridor that opens out to the school quadrangle, a space awaits news of the Young Leader victory alongside other blown-up pictures, news articles and press releases chronicling student achievements.

On one wall hangs a letter from former U.S. vice president and climate-change activist Al Gore congratulating the school on their participation in the GLOBE project, which links schools around the world to collect and share weather information among themselves and with scientists.

The opposite wall showcases pictures of the trophies won following the school’s participation in a peer counseling programme and photos of the school’s astronomy club, which performs commendably in the Astronomical Society’s secondary school quiz against more-celebrated schools.

The little rural school — a short drive south from Arima — with the name people associate with World Cup champions has something to prove.

“I always have a lot of faith in them, but I must admit they surprised me,” said biology teacher Roshni Madoo, who helped guide the Brazil Young Leaders. “They rose to a level that I did not expect. A number of things went wrong, but at every turn they pulled themselves up and said, ‘OK, let’s move on from here.’”

Hydroponic gardening is a form of agriculture that conserves water and effort. In their grow box, the Brazil Young Leaders planted patchoi in sharp sand and set up a pump to automatically feed the plants fertilized water for a few minutes every day. The water was reused, and every three weeks the fertilizer was replenished.

Building and maintaining the garden, the wastewater system and the greenhouse were impressive enough accomplishments for a school project. But when the 45-member Young Leader team met for the first time last October, they wanted to blow the competition out of the water.

They believe the extra touches made their project stand out from the rest.

Dividing themselves into committees, they organized an open day to show off their project and to educate the public about water conservation, they sent out fliers to advertise the event, they raised funds through a cake sale, a car wash, and sales of snow cones and their crops.

Then there was the mascot, the rotund Ma Tierra, who is blue and green and roughly resembles the Earth. She was designed by a form 5 art student. She welcomed visitors to the open day and visited primary schools to distribute prizes to winners of the essay competition.

Next to the greenhouse fiasco, building Ma Tierra presented the biggest challenge for the Brazil team. Bending the wires was easy enough, but covering them with sponge to make the costume comfortable to wear was “pressure,” to use a teacher’s word.

“We took a week to just cover one-fourth of it,” said Hematee.

Students said teamwork was key. Team members pitched ideas and agreed on the best ones with a minimum of quarrel.

“It hard,” team vice-president Darriann Mahepath said of coordinating the effort, “but at the end of the day, you have to work together as a group to achieve your goal.”

Hematee’s leadership was also credited for the team’s success. She was nominated for Most Outstanding Young Leader. The prize eventually went to Oshea George of Scarborough Secondary School.

Hematee believes the key to good leadership is listening.

“I developed a skill to communicate with people, to talk to people, hear their ideas and not to hear my own,” she said.

The team was also supported by the school and wider community. Students who weren’t part of the formal Young Leader team pitched in to build the greenhouse. Workers from the Agribusiness Association volunteered daily guidance in its construction. Businesses donated materials. Parliament member Jairam Seemungal suggested the use of hydroponics and offered technical support.

“Some companies, from the time they heard it was students, they just jumped right it,” said biology teacher Madoo.

But it was the students’ doggedness that above all else pulled them through.

“Several times when things went wrong and you’re at a point to give up and say, ‘Look, we done, we finish, we can’t make again!’ — their enthusiasm! They just not giving up!” said lab technician Kameel Mohammed-Ali, another Young Leader guide. “They said, ‘No, no, we’re going to fix this, we’re going to try something.’ It was an inspiration to be working with them and see that.”

When students saw what happened to the greenhouse that day, they couldn’t give themselves a lot of time to despair. They went to work repairing the structure. They cut out and fit new pipes, reinforcing the structure’s PVC frames with additional pipes before replacing the roof. The guests saw no signs of the disaster.

Despite its accomplishments, Brazil Secondary is grappling with serious problems. The Minister of Education, addressing increasing concerns about school violence, recently listed the institution among “high-risk” schools.

A taxi driver — as he took passengers up the short, paved road leading to the school — described seeing the previous week what looked like “a whole class fighting.” The principal, Sukiya Bedassie, confirmed a clash between two groups of students. In conversations with students, they described other instances of fighting. One altercation erupted apparently because one student stepped on another’s bag.

Some students come from “terrible socioeconomic backgrounds,” said Bedassie, and “a small number can cause some disruptions.”

But many of the students have promise, she said.

“I believe we still have quite a bit of innocence and students who are willing to listen, willing to do well,” she said.

The school, just like its Young Leaders, intends to persevere.

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