The Wilderness Foundation’s Education Team are delighted to say that our Wild Schools Climate Action programme has gone from strength to strength in 2022!

For those that haven’t heard about it before this is an 8-week programme taught in schools to students in Year 5 & 6. The first four weeks are interactive presentations covering the importance of nature, what climate change is and the effects it’s having on the planet and how each person can make a change and reduce their environmental footprint. The last four weeks are youth led projects to help with an environmental issue as part of the Green Influencers scheme.

In February we started our pilot programme with Year 5 and 6 students at White Notley Primary school. As it was our first time doing the presentations we were delighted by the enthusiasm and engagement of the students. For the projects they came up with lots of fantastic ideas and worked as four teams to improve their school grounds. ‘’The Evergreen Team’’ planted flowers to promote pollinating insects and started a gardening club to cut down on food miles. ‘’The Conservation Kids’’ greenified their school entrance to help support bees. ‘’The Wild Woodpeckers’’ focused on nature and wellbeing by creating a therapeutic garden with a wildlife mural, flowers, wind chimes and wind spinners. ‘’Recycle, Rewild’’ used old crates and log piles to create an animal corner and planted a willow archway to lead into the area. While creating the corner the students found a slow worm which led to much excitement as they hadn’t seen one before!

Based on the success of our first project we were thrilled to receive funding from Essex County Council Climate Action Challenge Fund to offer our Wild Schools Programme to ten more classes. We tweaked the presentations to include more games such as ‘’Biodiversity Balance’’, ‘’The Wild Silence Game’’ and ‘’Time To Decompose’’ as the young people really seemed to engage with these kind of activities. We also revised the actions that the students could do to help the planet based on the feedback of the previous group and the things they thought were achievable.

In September, we then continued our programme with four Year 6 classes at Henry Maynard Primary School. We found it interesting to see the different challenges that students in a more urban environment were finding, especially in terms of spending time in nature. Again, the students were very eager and really seemed to connect well with the new games and activities. They were especially shocked to find out how long certain materials like aluminium and glass took to decomposed if not recycled. At our second week in the school a group of students ran over to us in the playground and asked us to hug a tree with them, so we knew we were already making an impact! Before we even reached the project stage, the students used their own initiative, to contact the school kitchen about their ice cream which came in non-biodegradable styrofoam packaging and contained palm oil. They voiced their concerns about the waste not breaking down and the links with deforestation and the school agreed to change the ice cream provided.

The students then came up with lots of imaginative ideas and each class then voted on the project they would most like to do. Ruby Class decided to create wildlife habitats out of recycled materials and create videos to teach other young people about how they can do the same and why it’s important to create space for nature. When the weather improves, Emerald Class are planning to raise money for an environmental charity called Team Seas (who are working with Ocean Conservancy to remove plastic and pollution from beaches and the ocean) by hosting a concert in the school playground for friends and family. Topaz class are enhancing their school playground with bird feeders and fountains, hedgehog houses, bug hotels and flowers. They are also hoping to have outdoor lesson once a month as part of their ‘’Outside The Box’’ idea. Sapphire Class are creating an eco-trail around the school with nature activities to get other students outdoors and learn more about the environment around them.

In October we started working with the Year 5 class at Holy Family RC. Right from the start it was obvious that the students really cared, especially about declining hedgehog populations in Britain. They were also concerned about food waste and intrigued by composting. Therefore, it made perfect sense that their projects revolved around creating habitats for hedgehogs, growing their own food and creating a wormery for their school kitchen. They got really involved with every part of the project from researching how to make eco-friendly peppermint oil, to keep rodents away from the wormery, to designing ramps to make sure the hedgehog house was accessible to all. They also wanted to learn more about the nature around them so sourced bird ID posters and worked with their outdoor lead to try and organise more time outside. In the New Year we will all be working with a local garden centre to plant fruit and vegetables in the school grounds.

We have been so impressed with all the students, their enthusiasm, creativity and determination and are really looking forward to work with five new classes next term to see what ideas they come up with!