Image is Green Schools Committee winning the Ceist Award at the 2019 Annual School Awards Night in honour of their work addressing environmental issues in the school and the wider community. Ms. Brennan and her committee are hugely appreciated by everyone in the school.
Green Schools 2019
Following a very busy and action filled year our committee has been successful in helping our school to achieve its 4th green flag, the Travel Flag.
The ultimate aim of the theme was to increase the number of students travelling to school in a sustainable way i.e. by walking, using public transport or carpooling to school and to create awareness about our environment. To achieve this, our committee undertook a number of actions.
At the beginning of the year, Green Schools members presented a slideshow about climate change to the first year classes which helped us to increase our committee to 37 members this year.
Ciara O’Hanrahan the Education Officer from An Taisce, helped us enormously throughout the year. She helped us to create an action plan. She also met with all year groups to talk about climate change and the reasoning behind the travel theme.
In November we had an Art and Slogan competition. This gave us our Green Schools Travel motto: “Go for a stroll, let's take control and plan it for our planet”
In December members of our committee acted as stewards as our school community walked to the church for the annual carol service. This created awareness about being safe on the road.
The committee organised a Day of Action in January. On the day, their WOW campaign was launched and all were encouraged to travel in a more sustainable way. Committee members arrived early to help Chiara set up, and to distribute stickers to those who participated.
Senior students were given raffle tickets and entered into a draw for some cycling gear.
Juniors participated in a huge, travel related table quiz and were thrilled to be joined by Irish Fair city Actor, and Environmentalist Rachel Pilkington. She spoke about her passions, which include environmental care and veganism. The day was a massive success and generated lots of positive publicity.
We would like to thank the committee for all their hard work this year, and also to thank the teachers involved, Ms Brennan and Ms Connors and a special thanks to Chiara O’Hanrahan for her support and encouragement.
Finally, we ask that everybody would continue to do their best to continue to travel in a sustainable way. - After all, it’s Our Environment.