A huge "Congratulations" to Gail Newman for securing £5000 in funding from the Green Influencer Scheme.

What is the Green Influencer Scheme?

The mission of the Green Influencer Scheme is to help young people create deep, lasting and meaningful connections with the natural environment. Through the scheme, young people will learn and develop new skills that help them engage their friends and families, and contribute to their local communities. The scheme will help them to become Green Influencers –ambassadors for youth environmental action.

The Green Influencers Scheme was developed by The Ernest Cook Trust as a match-funded project with the #iwill Fund. The #iwill Fund is made possible thanks to £50 million joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to support young people to access high quality social action opportunities. 

What will Green Influencers do?

Young people will be at the forefront of designing, delivering and promoting their own environmental projects. As a youth social action scheme, this could include elements of volunteering, fundraising, campaigning or supporting peers. Projects can be anything they like, for example, creating a community garden. The Green Influencers will be supported by Green Mentors from SOS-UK helping them to make connections with local organisations and secure further funding from The Ernest Cook Trust in order to bring their social action projects to life.

The Green Influencers Scheme has been set up so that more young people can take part in action to support the environment and their local communities. We especially want to work with young people who haven't previously had access to these sorts of opportunities

The students selected decided to research the effects of the design and production of mobile phones, as they said that they tended to break a lot which cost the families a lot of money to replace. The phones are also usually thrown away which leads to chemicals leaking into the soil.

In the production of making phones there are a number of processes that are pollution the soil and air. As well as the air pollution from shipping phones across the world.

The students then had 6 sessions to look into ways that they could support the environment, and put forward a proposal to learn to repair mobile phones and iPad, so that they could help their families and local community.

The proposal was accepted and the school was very proud to receive a £5000 grant to set up a phone repair enterprise which the students have decided to call Green Phone.

Over the next year 10 students will learn to repair cracked screens, change batteries and reset phones, thereby stopping them being thrown away .

Click on the link below to find out more:

https://ernestcooktrust.org.uk/what-we-do/green-influencers-scheme/

Gail Newman

CDT and Horticulture Lead

Eco school Coordinator