Earth Day 2020

Wednesday 22nd April was the 50th anniversary of Earth day; the world’s largest movement to drive environmental awareness, looking at solutions to some of the serious climate issues we are currently faced with and a platform for global conversations and actions.

Summit celebrated this anniversary in a range of ways to help students understand how small changes can make a huge difference and that “everyone has the power to work as a community and unite for change”.

We had a huge range of ideas such as growing and looking after plants, practicing recycling, a litter pick, drawings of how we can help the planet and staff led sessions based around climate change and ways in which we can all help.

During the evening staff ran an ‘Earth Day Quiz’ which gave students, families and other staff a chance to learn more about Earth Day, participate in general knowledge and picture rounds as well as having lots of fun! The quiz included an introduction explaining the objectives of the movement and how working together we can make small changes that together have a much larger impact. A lot of our students were unaware of Earth Day and were interested in the types of changes that they could make to contribute.

Activities such as ‘ Name the recycling logo’ and ‘name the environmental issue’ were included to highlight all of the issues that climate change and humans have created and the long term impacts of our actions. Celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, and figures such as Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough were identified as figures who were helping to raise awareness of climate change affecting both the environment and the habitats and survival of many species. It was enjoyed by all whilst being educational at the same time. I think we all went away and learnt at least one new piece of information or fact that would have an impact upon how we viewed and interacted with the environment.

It was an important opportunity to raise awareness of these issues in an interactive and accessible format for our students. It is often believed that if we make small changes to our daily routine it will not have an impact on the bigger picture, but if we all thought like this change would never happen. In recent years more publicity for the need to change our behaviours has been successful in the education of society, but it is the actions and not the information or words that will result in change.

Earth Day was a great opportunity to help in “Creating a movement that is inclusive, impactful, and impossible to ignore to make people listen and act.” (Earthday.org).

Together we can make a change for the planet and future generations