Welcome to the Climate Action Toolkit on ChangeX.
The charity InterClimate Network (ICN) will support secondary school students, and teachers, engage your school community on climate action.
We will offer support and resources including:
Take a look at the 5 Steps in the 'How to Start' section for details on this toolkit, including tips on signing up and completing the ChangeX 30 Day Challenge.
Background to the project
Schools across the UK are planning and delivering a wide range of climate-friendly steps, such as reducing waste, making buildings more efficient, or encouraging greener travel. InterClimate Network’s (ICN) research reports (2021 and 2022) showed that a majority of secondary students are already motivated to make a difference.
Success in this area means having the support of the whole school community. Students – and staff – have lots of different views, and there will be different activities and approaches that can help motivate them. This is where the Climate Action Toolkit comes in, giving as many students as possible their say on climate action in a school-wide online survey, and using behaviour change approaches to support climate action campaigns that go further - more targeted, more creative, more impact.
Welcome to the Climate Action Toolkit on ChangeX.
The charity InterClimate Network (ICN) will support secondary school students, and teachers, engage your school community on climate action.
We will offer support and resources including:
Take a look at the 5 Steps in the 'How to Start' section for details on this toolkit, including tips on signing up and completing the ChangeX 30 Day Challenge.
Background to the project
Schools across the UK are planning and delivering a wide range of climate-friendly steps, such as reducing waste, making buildings more efficient, or encouraging greener travel. InterClimate Network’s (ICN) research reports (2021 and 2022) showed that a majority of secondary students are already motivated to make a difference.
Success in this area means having the support of the whole school community. Students – and staff – have lots of different views, and there will be different activities and approaches that can help motivate them. This is where the Climate Action Toolkit comes in, giving as many students as possible their say on climate action in a school-wide online survey, and using behaviour change approaches to support climate action campaigns that go further - more targeted, more creative, more impact.
The project's impact has been much bigger than expected!
We initially thought that the project would provide a means of getting climate information into schools, providing a drop in lesson plan with all the resourses in place for school staff to deliver it. Instead, we have worked much more widely, with college students, pupils ages 7 up to 16. We have provided nature days including foraging and plant identfication. We have produced a foragers guide. We have inspired young people to be wombles, and litter pick. We are running competitions to discourage littering. We now have a Green Youth Club, and an after-school forest school play session!!!
I am actually astounded by how much this project has achieved. Thank you so much for helping us to do this.
The sustainability of the project is in no doubt: Our Young People are very keen to build on their success, and continue to explore climate issues. We have already been invited back into a local school to do apple pressing again, which helps them understand where their food comes from.
Unfortunately due to capacity we have had to remove the offer of working with Leeds City College. However, we are offering the project to a local primary school who have identified the issue of "litter" within their community. They are going to fact find, explore causes and effects, They are then going to design sign which will be printed and put up around the community to raise awareness, similar to the "20 is plenty" signs to discourage speeding.
We are now working with Leeds City College on a project to capture the stories of the Asylum seekers and their journies to Leeds. This will provide a very powerful resourse to schools to explore the impact of climate change and climate justice globally
We have had a successful launch with the Youth Services. We did a day around sustainability with a group of Young people, Including our Climate Action Seacroft Youth Ambassador. We had a talk from our local Councillor at the recycling and community composting centre, about recycling and the way Leeds City Council uses what would traditionally be landfill to power homes and council buildings. We then went into our local park to "womble", which was highly successful, we collected, amongst other things "247 sweetie wrappers. This really spurred conversations around litter, personal accountability and responsibility. We mapped the park, then foraged. Back at base we created a foragers guide, learned about the life cycle of plants and then really enjoyed planting seeds. This has led to a request for a more sessions like this with a targeted group of boys.
Action plan:
Timeline
We plan to begin our project in May, after one of the key participants has completed her dissertation. Climate Action Seacroft is working with the Youth Service to deliver this programme to children age 11+. We will begin delivery on 1 June with a day devoted to an exploration around sustainability and recycling.
Budget: we will use the most ney to provide healthy sustainable food for the participants including foraged and locally grown. We will also use it for equipment and printing to encourage correct recycling across the third sector in Seacroft
Impact: We intend to work with around a dozen young people, who will be responsible for delivering the final product to other third sector locations as well as the community centre we will be working in.
Location: We shall be working in a community centre, we have permission and booking. We will also forage in the local park. Risk assessments etc will be done