‘The earth is God’s gift to us, full of beauty and wonder. And it belongs to everyone.’ -Pope Francis
Who are the Eco-Warriors?
Eco-Warriors are a group of children from Year 5, who meet each month to discuss eco-friendly and environmental issues and consider ways we can help as a school. With Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si in mind, they will promote the message of ‘caring for our common home’ and be responsible for encouraging this ethos throughout the school and beyond.
Click here to find out more about Laudato Si.
Why do we have Eco-Warriors?
- To join the urgent call to tackle the ecological crisis.
- To raise awareness of issues related to the environment, both locally and globally.
- To ensure children have a platform to voice their opinions and know that their voices are vital in making meaningful change.
- To plan and implement purposeful changes to support our local and global environment.
- To encourage and promote continued action, that will have a meaningful impact on our local and global environment.
How do children become an Eco-Warrior?
Year 5 children will be responsible for running the Eco-Warrior council. All Year 5 children will be given the opportunity to join the council if they wish to. At the end of Year 4, children will be asked if they wish to become an Eco-Warrior and will meet with the Year 5 children to hand over the role each summer.
What happens in the meetings?
We will begin each year by completing an environmental review and creating an action plan for the upcoming year. Throughout the year, Eco-Warriors will hear from children throughout the school to discuss ideas about changes and improvements to our environment and community. The issues are then raised in meetings and Eco-Warriors will discuss how to move forward, presenting their ideas to the headteacher and the rest of the school.
Eco Code
The Eco-Warriors invited all the children across the school to come up with an Eco-Code for our school. They collated all the ideas and designed a poem and rap to present to the school.
Everyone agreed to our new Eco-Code.
Our Eco Code
St Wilfrid’s cares about our planet.
Together we will respect God’s world.
We will find the bin and put litter in.
It is everyone’s responsibility.
Love One Another and Our Common Home.
Friends and family will be involved.
Recycle, reuse, repair and reduce!
It’s never too late to take action.
Don’t waste food; put your fruit in the green bin.
Step by step, no matter how small, we will make this planet better for all!
Our Eco Warriors regularly check our school grounds for litter and organise whole class trips to help clean up our community.
Our projects with M.E.E.N (Manchester Environmental Education Network)
We have been very lucky to work with M.E.E.N on two of our Eco-Schools projects; Biodiversity and Waste.
Please click the link to read the case studies on these projects.
Eco-Schools England
We are proud to have been awarded our Eco-School award with Distinction.
Feedback from Eco-Schools
Congratulations On Passing Your Eco-Schools Green Flag with Distinction!
We are very pleased to tell you that you and your Eco-Committee at St Wilfrid’s RC Primary School have been awarded an Eco-Schools Green Flag.
We reviewed your application and noted the following:
It’s wonderful that your Eco-Committee has had so much success that applications for next year have increased. Thank you for uploading copies of your meeting minutes so we can see how you have progressed. The fact that your EcoCommittee were able to ask staff the questions and share their Environmental Review findings with their schoolmates and your leadership team is fantastic! This keeps your school community up-to-date with the Eco-Committee’s progress and raises the prestige of it committee members. It is a clear demonstration of whole school buy in to the Eco-Schools programme. Maybe for next year, look to spread the Environmental Review across year groups which will further spread the whole school buy in. Your action plan is great! The actions that you planned out were really SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound). This is important as it helps to achieve progress and empower your Eco Committee. Your evaluation results are brilliant, well done! We love that you involved the whole school in choosing which topics to run with this year! This is a great way to get your whole school on board and maximise your impacts. The curriculum link evidence you uploaded alongside your application is amazing, it was brilliant to be able to see the creative and innovative ways educators in your school tackled huge global issues in a child-friendly way – this shows a true dedication to environmental education.
Everyone involved in Eco-Schools at your school should take immense pride from the parental quote provided. It’s a great demonstration that you are going the extra mile to enable young people’s passion for environmentalism and by doing so you are also enriching their school life! What a great Eco-Board, we love that you have a display monitor in the middle, hopefully showcasing all the excellent work of your Eco-Committee! We love that you asked the question of what has been the greatest success and challenges this year to your Eco-Warriors! Thank you for taking part in the Big School Clean and contributing a fantastic 18 bags to the cause! We loved seeing the children in eco action! It’s great that the whole school contributed ideas for your Eco-Code, and how you have linked it to the school values and the topics. Your Eco-Schools Green Flag application is wonderful from start to finish – well done achieving your Eco-Schools Green Flag with Distinction Award.
As always THANK YOU very much for your hard work, we are so proud of all our schools and the collective achievements they have made to protect our planet for future generations. We look forward to working with St Wilfrid’s RC Primary School again next academic year to help you expand on your eco-actions and successes of this year.
The Eco-Schools Team