Young Advocates – UNESCO says that young people are a critical population who are leading ESD-related projects, but often do not have the means to access institutional visibility that organizations often can. For this reason, it is launching the Young Advocates 4 ESD Challenge and calling on all young people under 25 years old to share their stories about how they are promoting ESD. UNESCO encourages all young advocates for ESD to participate in the challenge in order to have the opportunity to be features in a UNESCO webstory and participate in future events. A submission form is here.
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DEFRA & DfE – The new ministerial team at DEFRA is now in place, led by Ranil Jayawardena. The complete DfE team is here. It’s led by Kit Malthouse. Only the ministers in the House of Lords have experience of the Departments from the early Johnson government: Lord Benyon and Baroness Barran.
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International Awards – Your school can apply for the British Council’s International School Award at one of four levels, dependent on your school’s experience and expertise in international education. Applications are now open all year for Foundation and Intermediate level. The submission deadline to receive your Action Plan feedback for the 2022-2023 academic year is 13 November 2022. Details here.
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CCE-ST – UNESCO’s climate change education for social transformation initiative and its On the road to COP 27 webinar series continues until November. The next webinar is on October 25th. The focus is: getting ready to scale up climate change education at COP27. This will review the gaps, challenges and opportunities in promoting climate change education for social transformation in education and sustainable development policies and curriculums. The discussion will present strategies to promote the greening of every education policy and curriculum, particularly around COP27. You can find out more here.
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Zero Carbon Ed – The Green Schools Project is offering a fully-funded programme to help schools teach pupils about the climate crisis and start their journey to lower emissions through pupil-led projects. A comprehensive package of lesson plans, resources, training materials and support, Zero Carbon Schools is open for registrations until 14th October. Their website has more information and you can sign up there.
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Good Dirt – The Dirt Is Good schools programme aims to enable young people to take action on the environmental and social causes they care about. It is built upon four key principles and a handbook has been designed using insights from research into what motivates young people to take action. There are two versions of the handbook available, one for 7-11 year olds and one for 11-14 year olds. It provides step by step guidance on how to run the programme with supporting activities that you can do with your students. You can sign up to access it.
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Creative Rights – This is a digital resource that brings the issue of Human Rights to life through artworks, research journeys and creative project examples. It’s been created for young people and educators across the world by students aged 13-18 from three Coventry schools. The resource is designed to inspire other classrooms to create their own responses to the UN Declaration of Human Rights and to start new conversations about its relevance today. More details here.
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Sending Your Message – As part of the Called Running Out of Time campaign, we are all urged to send a one-minute video message on why we think we need Quality Climate Education for All and what actions are required. Guidelines for creating a video message can be found here.
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Social and Environmental Justice – To mark its Diamond Jubilee celebrations, Canterbury Christ Church University is running an interdisciplinary day on October 18th that explores, analyses, and celebrates social and environmental justice and its application to providing a sustainable future. There will be presentations, workshops and interactive activities with academics, environmentalists, and the public. It is a free event, but booking is necessary for the conference and for workshops. You can book a place here.
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Communication Teaser – Here is the official teaser programme for this year’s Communicate conference [15 to 16 November]. There will be both live and online sessions across the two days.
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Coal to Clean – Ember is an independent energy think tank that “uses data-driven insights to shift the world from coal to clean electricity”. This is what it has to say about the UK.
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Current Affairs – Britain was a net exporter of electricity to the European mainland in the second quarter of the year. This went through the interconnectors linked to France, Belgium and the Netherlands and equated to 8% of the electricity generated [5.5TWh]. This was worth £1.5 billion.
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Stormy Weather – The Government’s much anticipated Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan, proposed to tackle the problems of sewage in our rivers was published in late August. Wildlife & Countryside Link members have not reacted positively to the proposals including the 30 year timescale. With the plan, 48% of storm overflows that emit sewage will be completely unimproved by 2040, with only 38% of the storm overflows that cause the most harm due to be improved by 2030. ‘‘Smoke and mirrors’’, ‘‘too little, too late’’ – were two of the reactions.
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Drought and Kites – Although the number of red kites has grown by 1935% between 1995 and 2020 across the UK and conservation efforts have been hugely successful. However, all might not be so well in the future. In an article in The Conversation, Esther Kettel from Nottingham Trent University writes about the effect of drought on red kite chicks born during particularly dry years.