Queen Elizabeth II High School

The girls involved in the Queen Elizabeth II High School ‘Grow your own Project’ were invited to display their clothes they have grown in the bi-annual Manx Wearable Art Show. The girls were given the opportunity to spread their message about the environmental impact and their eco – concerns around ‘fast fashion’. They paraded their garments on the catwalk to a packed audience.

The clothes grown from bacteria, tea and sugar certainly provided a talking point among the audience and many were overheard discussing the project when leaving the venue.

The school received an e-mail from the organisers saying “The show on Friday went so well and we were pleased with the part …

Read all of ‘Grow your own Clothes‘ feature in Manx Wearable Art Show

Subject

As fashion conscious teenagers we are aware that many people have to have the latest style and since prices are low many consider clothing to be disposable. This so called ‘fast fashion’ leaves a pollution footprint with each step of the clothing life cycle generating potential environmental and occupational hazards. Influenced by fashion designer Suzanne Lee we want to investigate her idea of growing a more ecological and sustainable material ‘to grow a dress in a vat of liquid’. We want to use microbial-cellulose produced by a symbiotic mixture of yeast and bacteria grown in bathtubs of sweet green tea.

Aim

Our aim is to raise awareness that with the right simple …

Read all of QEII High School Mission – Grow your Own Clothes

We have continued our Paper Cycle Project into the Summer Term. As well as  continuing to make our paper fuel briquettes and paper recycling boxes we have started 2 new projects involving recycling paper. These are making seed paper and making paper pots for growing seeds.
Paper Briquettes
 Year 7 students made a further 200 paper fuel briquettes for the elderly. We have recycled about 800 newspapers to make the briquettes. The fuel briquettes will be dried over the summer holidays and then be distributed in the winter to the elderly who rely on fires for their heating. We have now made approximately 527 briquettes recycling approximately 2400 old newspapers.
Paper Recycling Boxes
Yr 7 students have just converted  32 crisp boxes into new paper …

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Gambia 2011  
We were very lucky to embark on a ‘once in a lifetime trip’ to the Gambia.

The trip was a prize for winning the Most Outstanding School at the Giving Nation Social Action Awards in October. Giving Nation is a project of the Citizenship Foundation that aims to build engaged and active youth by building social action projects that benefit their local community.

Giving Nation promotes and encourages thousands of secondary school students across the UK to get involved in charity work, including campaigning, social enterprise, volunteering and community activities.

We raised an £27,000 for many charities and good causes during the last school year.

Moira Pain said: “We feel so proud and so privileged to have won such a nationally acclaimed award. …

Read all of Gambia Report

Problems of Travel – A long days’ journey
During the week concern universal took us on a two day trip up country to see some of their projects first hand. On the way up we discovered just how difficult it was to travel from one side of the river to the other. After getting up at five in the morning to ensure we were near the front of the mass of cars and trucks that seemed to be the Gambians ‘organisation’, at the ferry we had to wait for 7 hours before we got across to the north bank. This was because of the disorganisation, the day before when none of the ferries had travelled from the Port we were at …

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Near the end of the trip to the Gambia we visited Mama Africa, which we were told before arriving is a garden designed to inspire the women of the Gambia.

Mama Africa was indeed an inspirational place. Isha Fofana, the artist and owner of the compound, explained to us how in the Gambia it is uncommon to have females become artists and how her aim was to show women they could be who they want to be. Mama Africa is also a place to learn, as Isha shows her heritage in her art, along with encouraging the children to visit to stay at school for as long as they can. This helps women and children alike to be educated as well …

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Visit to Gambia Is Good (GIG) Community Farm
Concern Universal is helping local communities to grow fresh produce that can be sold to hotels, restaurants and supermarkets. Over 1000 women have been trained by the GIG project. The women are selected from their communities and training is carried out on the farms. When they return home they are supported and visited by their trainers on a regular basis.

The women learn about crop planning; what is needed in months ahead and what the market demands. They learn about crop rotation and its importance to control pests and disease as well as maintain soil structure.

At the farm they were experimenting with breeding ducks. The meat is in demand by the local hotels. The …

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Six of us from school were very lucky to spend a week in Gambia with the Charity Concern Universal.  Our school won the Giving Nation Social Action Award 2010. Our mission for the week was to report back on sustainable agricultural and tourism under the guidance of Concern Universal and Giving Nation.

We would like to share what we have learnt.
Gunjur Environmental Protection and Development Group
We visited Gunjur Environmental Protection and Development Group (GEPADG) on our very first morning. We were met by a small group of volunteers acting as our guides, who explained that GEPADG’s aim is “to enhance the livelihoods of the local people). We set off on our tour of GEPADG’s protected area of conservation, near the lodge. …

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Project Subject:
Paper is a commodity used to excess in the modern world. Books, pages, lined paper, blank paper, pamphlets, posters, packaging – everywhere you look, there it is. In a busy school environment, thousands of pieces of paper are used every week – and a good number of these are just wastefully thrown away. Our eco-committee saw this great waste – and decided to do something about it. For the past three years we have raised awareness through posters (admittedly fighting fire with fire); promoted our school websites as alternatives to paper, and where we couldn’t reduce the paper we reused and recycled it.
…

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Summary:
We were concerned about the increasing carbon emissions from our school transport. We conducted a survey on vehicle use, model, emissions and journey length for the entire school for a year. We calculated, we needed to plant 4490 trees to offset annual transport emissions. To date we have planted 2800 trees, organised a cycle to school day to encourage less vehicle use, built a bike shed from recycled materials, organised cycle buses, influenced government to action cycle lanes and setup a tree nursery for all new students to grow trees. Our vision is to become carbon neutral with our school transport.
We called our project tREe’CYCLE’ because we are recycling Carbon Dioxide emissions by planting trees, and …

Read all of tREe’Cycle’ at Queen Elizabeth II High School – Mission Report!