Young people working with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust have been awarded £15,000 to launch their own projects to reduce plastic waste and tackle sustainable travel and littering thanks to The Ernest Cook Trust’s Green Influencers Scheme.
Under its Green Influencers Scheme, The Ernest Cook Trust is helping 36 Host Organisations – including Derbyshire Wildlife Trust - to fund the employment of 44 Green Mentors. Each Green Mentor’s role is to enable young people to lead the way as ‘Green Influencers’ on environmental social action projects, and the aim is to recruit 5,000 across the country.
The scheme is match-funded through the #iwill Fund, which is a £54 million joint investment between 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.
A group of pupils at the David Neiper Academy in Alfreton started out conserving water by installing water butts for the gardening club to use. Since then, they have become concerned by the number of single-use plastic water bottles being used in their school and applied for funding to provide every pupil with a reusable water bottle and install recycling bins in all classrooms.
With more than 600 pupils in the school, this project has the potential to save 600 single-use plastic bottles being used every day and the group now has plans to secure more funding from local businesses to continue the water bottle scheme for future school years and to start new projects.
Another group of Green Influencers from Allestree Woodlands aim to encourage sustainable transport to and from school. The ‘Super Cyclists’ plan to purchase a fleet of bikes to allow pupils to learn to ride safely. Teachers will also become trained on how to maintain the bikes and share these skills with pupils, so that the scheme can continue to benefit pupils for years to come.
More on:
Posted On: 19/07/2022