ECO-Schools Climate Change Summit

On Thursday 14 February we arrived at Stormont to give a presentation on the effect of Climate Change on the agriculture and people of Ghana.  We gathered in the Long Gallery with groups of students from other schools.

 

Frank Mitchell, from UTV, introduced various people who are working on and researching climate change, including Ian Humphries, CEO of Tidy NI; David Manning from Airtricity; Professor Sue Christie from NGO Challenge , and Brid Connelly from FEE, who is the International Eco-Schools coordinator.

Terry A’Hearn, CEO of NI Environment Agency was quizzed with some deep questions from each of the schools present.  It was good to hear that the NI Assembly are taking Climate Change very seriously and taking action to reduce its contribution to climate change by using electric cars and reducing waste.

The presentations began at 11.30am; it was interesting to learn about the contribution that different countries have on Climate Change and how they have both local and global effects.  Presentations from other schools included Tanzania, USA, Australia and Spain.  We were very anxious about presenting our prezi, especially as we were the youngest pupils presenting on the day.  However, it went well and our concerns departed once we completed our talk.

Following lunch, we entered a competition for one of two YRE hoodies.  Erin was really surprised when her name was announced as a winner; she had correctly identified that 53 countries are currently running ECO-Schools programmes.

Goodie bags were placed on our seats during lunch, containing leaflets, stationery, a memory stick, a t-shirt and a windmill.  Finally, following very interesting talks by HSBC Climate Initiative, Trocaire and Climate NI, each school was presented with a certificate for participating in the event.

Further information on the event and Eco-schools can be found at www.eco-schoolsni.org .

 

Jessica Courtney, Amber Cummins, Erin Osborne, Emiko Seawright 9k