Henley Schools' Climate Action Group Conference

Report by Rebecca (U6) -

Last week Amelia, Alice and I went to the Henley Schools’ Climate Action Group Conference that was held at Henley College. When we arrived, we were surprised to see so many young people attending the conference, when I say young, I mean one of the school groups were nursery children and most of the children were ranging Years 4-6 except for four Upper fives from Shiplake College and our three members of Upper six.

The conference began with an introduction to Greener Henley and their organisation as well as a rundown of how the evening was planned to go. The younger children had a workshop and during that time we were given the opportunity to discuss topics surrounding climate change which we then picked a topic to discuss with a primary school group. We had the topic of waste, which allowed us to identify what forms of waste we have here at Queen Anne’s and how we plan to tackle the food, paper, plastic and electricity waste to make our school more sustainable.

We then got to talk with both Nettlebed and St Mary’s Primary School and the children had lots of great ideas and we discussed why different types of waste were bad, how we tackle waste problems at each school and things we would like to do around school to reduce our waste. We gave them ideas such as a food council and using Microsoft OneNote to eliminate food and paper waste at their school.

Being able to discuss these issues and solutions with the children really gave Amelia, Alice and I the opportunity to change the way we approach talking and thinking about the topic of climate change and the new ways we can think of solutions and in school differences we can make.

At the end of the conference we were given some wildflower seeds to plant around school and made some pledges that we plan to implement such as getting a bike shelter for those who ride their bikes to school to encourage more people to ride their bikes, to plant more greenery around the school and look how we can utilise the open space we have now and create more green space and have bins around school to allow for separation of food, paper and plastic waste.

Throughout the evening we also got to meet and talk to a variety of people such as the Mayor of Henely and the organisers of the event who were all very interested in what measures we are doing here at Queen Anne’s and willing and wanting to assist us in setting up new measures. The Greener Henley group plan to hold another conference in February to see how our pledges have gone and to see what other measures we can put in place and I’m sure we will be attending once again. Overall, the conference was very informative and enjoyable for Amelia, Alice and I and we are looking forward to February.