Recent updates on current Roots & Shoots missions

Roots & Shoots in Cambridge run a project within Anglia Ruskin University. This year, we will fundraise for MONA.

MONA is a Sanctuary in Spain which conserves primates through rehabilitation, education and preservation of their habitats. We hope to travel to MONA, Spain Summer 2012 to volunteer and work with MONA in primate conservation. Our fundraising event involves selling warm fair trade soup and rolls during the colder months to students on the run for a good price. Proceeds of this will go to MONA.

We are fortunate enough to have captured the attentions of film students in Cambridge and Cam FM who have asked us to do an interview. We hope to advertise our fundraising event, gain more support and help …

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This year we were invited to participate in Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots Walk for Peace. Recognizing the importance of education and communication the Green Girls and the three Year 4 classes created Doves for Peace. While the Year 4s celebrated with a walk in our local park, the Green Team toured London. We met with the Roots & Shoots team, were told all about Jane Goodall’s Mr. H. Junior, and held our Doves high. It was a great day which helped to solidify this year’s new team and helped give the girls a sense of purpose as they were able to share their ideas with those in the community who inevitably stopped to talk.

Being a city school it is often difficult to enjoy the great outdoors so now we have brought a taste of nature to our school. From our garden parties where girls of all ages come together to plant flowers for each of the classes to our new and wonderful garden, Pembridge is simply blooming. With her green thumb Mrs Nagle, our Drama teacher, helped the Green Girls convert a small play area into a delightful oasis. Throughout the year she works with various students growing a variety of food which are then prepared and served during lunch time. We are now able to grow our own food, sit amongst greenery for quiet reading and even have summer picnics!

Many of our parents are equally concerned with being sustainable and protecting our environment. One example of their participation is a new recycling ink cartridges programme that Mrs. Woodruff and her daughter Dora have set up. Now, not only can we recycle our batteries with the help of the Kensington and Chelsea borough but now also all our ink cartridges.

With our interests in reducing and reusing waste, Brookwood gave our Green Girls a wormary of our own. All classes take turns at collecting food scraps from the kitchen and adding them to our compost. After a year, we finally managed to reap the benefits of the compost and received liquid nutrients just in time to aid our new garden.

Brookwood, our school caterers, have worked alongside our Green Team discussing ideas and listening to the students concerns. Together we have come up with reusable lunch bags in hopes of reducing our waste. Our food is bought from sustainable organisations and a booklet has been produced to explain these initiatives to the children and parents.

With so much interest and such great ideas we have expanded our Green Team. We now have girls from Kindergarten to Year 6 meeting weekly to work on making our school eco-friendly and to discuss conservation and environmental topics. Girls from Kindegarten to Year 3 work together or learning about nature and the importance of looking after it while girls from Year 4 to Year 6 are divided into two camps; one working on our Pembridge Missions and the other on Roots & Shoots. Together girls report to their classes weekly on all we have learnt and the initiatives we hope to achieve. To increase our team identity girls designed a ‘Green Logo’ and voted on it. Now we not only have …

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Our eco-committee decided to go all out this year and create miniature gardens from all around the world to enter in the annual Blaenau Gwent in Bloom competition. 

The 6 large planters in the main school yard were beginning to rot so we asked our local environmental officer to help renew them.  Once renewed we set about researching  plants and flowers from four continents; Africa, Australia, Asia and the Mediterranean.  Our last two planters were converted into Welsh cottage gardens.

AFRICA:-

In Africa we planted cape daisies, agapanthus and african marigolds.

AUSTRALIA:-

In Australia we planted cana lilies, phormium and bottle brush plants.

MEDITERRANEAN:-

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Read all of Bryngwyn in Bloom 2011 – Gardens around the world!

Our Year 6 pupils have been very busy building a sustainable african keyhole  garden.  They have been learning about sustainability and the soil conditions in Africa.  They have decided to grow tomatoes, sweetcorn and potatoes.   
The children used a combination of bricks and stones to create the garden.  They turned a piece of willow fencing into a cylinder to create the compost area at the centre of the garden.  A garden sieve was then placed on top of the compost area to allow the rain water to seep through the compost and into the garden to help enrich the soil.  Each day different children throughout the school place their banana peel, fruit stumps etc and the staff …

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It would have been really cool to have been able to unfurl a giant dove and hold it aloft as we have seen other Roots & Shoots teams do in celebration of Peace Day; but it wasn’t to be, and as we had already made plans to undertake a Day of Peace event in a local shopping centre on the 25th of September we were still able to raise awareness and collect peace pledges.
         
With upwards of 15,000 people passing through the area we were in, on any given Sunday, we felt it …

Read all of Peace Day Event 2011