Accrington St Christopher's Church of England High School

The Roots & Shoots programme is ‘About making positive change happen’ and so is everyone at St Christopher’s Roots & Shoots is also about creating a ‘Supportive environment where young people come together to share ideas and inspiration’ just like St Christopher’s. Roots & Shoots encourages ‘young people like us to implement successful community service projects and participate in special events, so do St Christopher’s. We haven’t achieved global domination but we’ve defiantly caught the attention of most in our county and the nation beyond that. We have tried to make all we do appealing to everyone – from listeners of BBC Radio Lancashire to the fans of football; to primary school pupils and to the old folks of nursing homes.

Naturally to get …

Read all of Our Roots & Shoots group (what was and is and is to come!)

This next year (2011-2012) we aim to achieve many things.

We are already talking with ‘Rock FM’ (a local radio station) to create monthly blogs and podcasts on sustainability, when those go online we will post a link on this blog.
We are also currently looking at the possibility of acquiring a poly-tunnel and/or solar photo-voltaic panels.
We have been asked to mentor another school in our area to improve it’s sustainability.
We would like to build an outdoor classroom.
We would love to create a calendar with seasonal recipes following the success of Pledge 4 Veg.
More ideas may …

Read all of What we hope to achieve next year

In order to raise awareness of how easy it is to grow your own fruit and vegetables St. Christopher’s C.E High School is producing a calendar. The calendar will inform its owner of what time of year to sow, plant out and harvest a variety of around 30 fruits and vegetables which we feel are both easy to grow and tasty. Every month there will also be a seasonal recipe which will incorporate the fruit and vegetables which need harvesting that month. The recipes which we are using in the calendar are going to be chosen from a competition starting in school in September. Pupils will have the chance to bring in a family favourite recipe from home which will …

Read all of Grow Your Own Calendar

Over the past year our Roots & Shoots group has flourished.

Our nationally recognized Pledge 4 Veg campaign was an amazing success. For those of you who haven’t heard of Pledge 4 Veg it was an initiative thought up by some of our year 8 pupils who decided that they wanted to make a huge change in our community, so we started asking people in the local area to sign a promise that they would grow veg over the next year the following film explains all…

The final stage of Pledge 4 Veg was to give everyone who came to our annual Summer …

Read all of Accrington St. Christopher’s Summer Update

Potty Over Veg?

Pupils at St Christopher’s CE High School are literally going potty over their ‘Pledge 4 Veg’ campaign. They have just received 2,000 pots and seeds to give away to the public as part of their Pledge 4 Veg campaign. They want all local residents to pledge to grow some of their own produce this year. In our town, with lots of terraced housing, they realised despite growing our own food at school, many children thought this couldn’t be continued at home without a large garden. The eco group had other ideas! They launched a campaign called ‘Pledge 4 Veg’ to get the rest of the school and local community growing. To self fund, they wrote letters to local …

Read all of Jane Goodall kicks off our Pledge 4 Veg campaign

A Community Orchard has been planted in the grounds of St Christopher’s High School.

The school’s Eco-Group were keen to plant the orchard to demonstrate that it is possible to grow your own fruit, even in Accrington, and the project will also highlight that fruit is seasonal. Although the trees are on school land the resulting fruit will be for the community who will benefit from free, locally-grown fruit without the CO2 contributions of transporting imported fruit.

The idea was initiated by the Eco group and helped by The PROSPECTS Foundation which is eager to help communities respond to climate change, and funding was granted by …

Read all of St Christopher’s Fruity Future

An East Lancashire school St Christopher’s held a major environmental celebration, on Saturday 12th June.

Visitors who biked to the event, were rewarded with a free breakfast, a little more exercise on the cycle smoothie maker ensured the extra pedal power was worth while with a healthy fruit drink!

Children and adults tried to ‘give something back’ to the Earth, by learning more about sustainable living. The fair will brought together 12 local primary school teams to compete for the first “Primary Eco Factor” which was won by St Peter’s Primary School, Accrington. To find which primary school had the ‘eco factor’, teams of four were challenged to under take the green ‘triathlon’ and an eco treasure hunt around the fair. St …

Read all of Accrington St Christopher’s Summer Eco Fair

Our Eco group have had a hit squad working on our school’s carbon foot print.

We started our Eco group in September 2008 and have been busy workers from mucky gardeners to being Eco-fairies.

Just a little taste of what we have been doing…

First of all we did a litter pick on our school field…mainly rubbish from people who use it in the evening! We recycled what we could in our new recycling bins.
We have also started a vegetable garden in our Year 7 yard – we have grown, onions, brussel sprouts, radish, tomatoes, potatoes and lot more yummy food!  !
We have planted some plants and trees in our huge field.
We have also created several Eco-fairies. We go around all the classrooms in …

Read all of “Well haven’t we been busy!!!” :D

Accrington St Christopher’s Church of England High School in Accrington, Lancashire joined Roots & Shoots: Mission Possible today.

You can see where Accrington St Christopher’s Church of England High School is on a map and read about their local environment here.