How is Green Schools Revolution celebrating #iwill Week this November?
All strands of Green Schools Revolution have been hard at work this autumn term to make their education more sustainable. Schools and colleges up and down the country have been talking and taking action, showing how powerful youth-led social action can be!
Just last week, 16 schools across South Lanarkshire delivered their Teach the Teacher sessions on the same day as part of a district-wide INSET day. Staff from SOS-UK hosted an in-person onboarding for all students earlier in the year to help them feel prepared to deliver their sessions, and the students have been busy rehearsing for the big day! Students were really well engaged and came up with loads of brilliant ideas on how to integrate climate into their classrooms. The council then collected their ideas and will be sharing them with all schools in the area to showcase existing best practice and to give teachers a better idea of what students want from their climate education.
With the government requirement for all schools to write a Climate Action Plan incoming, our schools have been strides ahead creating student-led Climate Action Plans based on expert knowledge from our student staff team, energy auditors and climate scientists. St Mary’s Catholic High School recently put their heads together to create a plan for their school in the form of a tree, turning their initial ideas into actions. Their SOS-UK Coordinator Gemma created the tree design based on the group’s ideas for what their CAP should look like in an earlier session. So, it's the students taking action on climate change at St Mary's, right down to the very last leaf.
Kicking off the second year of the Wilding Schools project, our students are getting into the swing of conducting baseline wildlife surveys, ordering gardening equipment and getting their hands dirty creating new habitats for their target species groups. East Norfolk College have come on leaps and bounds, especially since they received additional CAPITA funding back in June, on top of the core Wilding Schools project funding from the #iWill Fund, to start making ground changes this summer. They’ve so far used this to buy materials and plants to install a large green wall including clematis, jasmines and ceanothus plants, which will complement their wildflower meadow to increase insect biodiversity in their school.
The work of Green Schools Revolution would not be possible without the generosity of the OVO Foundation and the #iwill Fund, a joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) which supports young people to access high quality social action opportunities.
