What's it about?
Appetite for Action is for all primary Schools in the UK and Ireland. It’s a free initiative that helps schools tackle a range of sustainability issues through the topic of food. Developed in conjunction with teachers, the website offers schools free resources helping pupils to reduce food waste, grow their own fruit and vegetables, understand composting and reduce waste to landfill plus the opportunity to take part in a school challenge to reduce their schools CO2 impact and potentially win £3,000 and Sky News visiting their school for the day.
How Schools are taking part
Schools choose to take part in a challenge around food, waste or growing. Students get the opportunity to create an online team profile, measure their activities, develop a blog on the actions taken and share ideas with similar schools. All challenge participants receive a United Nations Environment Programme Certificate.
Year One Winning School
Since September 2008, over 1,300 schools have registered to take part. In June, Sky News ran an action-packed film-making day at our winning school with the biggest appetite for action across the UK, St Marks Primary School in Wigan. They also received a cheque for £3,000.
St Mark’s formed a team called "The Eco Warriors" to tackle the challenge head on and the team members demonstrated a serious commitment to their ‘Get Growing’ challenge. The team’s activities included a community dig where 18 volunteers got their hands dirty by helping prepare raised beds for the vegetable seedlings. The team also encouraged other classes to get involved, with over 40 students taking part altogether.
Sky News worked with children to produce short films which were edited and presented back to the whole school of 179 pupils, teachers, governors and the local community along with a special message of congratulations from Eamonn Holmes which went down a storm with the kids. Visit the Sky News website to see the short films produced by St Marks Primary School children.
Visit the Sky News website for more details: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/video/Winning-students-from-St-Marks-School-in-Wigan-show-their-eco-projects/Video/200906415322430 (opens in a new window)
Karen Long, a Teacher at St Mark’s said: "The children have just had so much fun working on Appetite for Action and have learnt a great deal about making the food they eat more sustainable and making the most of the resources we have. We’re thrilled that Sky and Global Action Plan have recognised their achievements with this award and the children were really excited about meeting the team from Sky News when they came to visit!"
We hope to engage over 3,000 schools across the UK and Ireland by the end of 2010. To get your local school involved in year two of Appetite for Action, please visit the Appetite for Action website: http://appetiteforaction.org.uk/ (opens in a new window)