Green Schools play an important role in promoting a caring relationship with our environment. The school is proud of our numerous green flags and different initiatives working in collaboration with local environmental agencies and organisations.

European Researchers Event Winners

By Charlie Quinn

The Young Environmentalist Awards are an annual event which aim to both reward and recognise young people across the country for their environmental awareness and action. Each year hundreds of projects are sent in and adjudicated on throughout the course of the school year with the finals taking place in late May in the Convention Centre. Luckily for the lads in our school we are mentored excellently through the process and helped along the way by both Mr.Kelleher and the great people at Eco-Unesco.

Last year alone we entered a total of 8 projects from the two transition year classes who split up early on and got to work. The boys set out to work on their own ideas to help research, raise awareness and take action tackling issues like biodiversity, energy, waste and even water pollution and hygiene in our school. Today I’ll be discussing the project my team worked on, which was the lack of biodiverse areas in our school. Our plan was to improve and renovate further on what was already happening in our school garden.

The first plan of action was to set out a plan, team roles and of course our objectives and end goals. Once we had this we took to action and it felt like before we even got going the Eco-Dens or semi-finals had come. So we packed our bags and headed off to UCD for the day, bringing all our evidence of work and a powerpoint to hopefully win over and convince the judges of the meaningfulness of our project. Thankfully this is what we did, winning us a place in the finals and a trip out to the convention center.

Between the semi-finals and finals is when we got down to the real work, doing even more research and adding what we could to further improve what we’d already done. Once the dreaded day was quickly approaching us we got a display together and did our final preparations. We along with the six other teams from our school arrived at the convention center early that morning and set up the displays surrounded by other schools just as hard working and hopeful as us.

Throughout the day we could meander about the crowds looking at all the impressive work and also listen in to some interesting talks being held by specialists in their own fields. At last the judges came to our station and it was go time. The judges had a chat with us about our project that lasted about ten minutes and to be quite honest was a lot easier then we had all expected. They were kind and friendly and really willing to learn about what we’d done. Shortly after we headed off for lunch before returning for the final awards ceremony.

The ceremony ran through and we thought our chance was gone, however towards the end they announced a new award they would be giving out sponsored by none other than IKEA. The award was for having a project which is going to be carried on and sustained for years to come. And so far that idea has come to life with IKEA already coming in this year to help out this year's projects and further improve on the work done in last year.

We were very thankful for both the funding and help provided and now that we’re in fifth year, we are even more excited to see what the new transition years come up with, to hopefully have the same amount of success as we did last year.

IKEA Sustainable Garden

Gabriel de Col Alves de Lima

Building in the success of last year's TY class our TY group has been working hard on a plan for a new sustainable garden. Phase 1 of the plan saw the development of more outside sensory well-being areas in our school. We hope the area could be used for intermittent small outside classes. Our class began work in November support of professionals from IKEA.

Ikea has been kind enough to sponsor our school (Drimnagh Castle) to build a new garden near the school entrance for the students to relax, eat during break, and maybe even do homework. There is a group of people from the Transition Year class (T.Y) that will be coming up with ideas to build along with the workers from Ikea and Eco-Unesco. The end goal is to have an Eco-friendly garden with hedges, a few new trees planted, a rock path and wooden shelter.

The people helping us are;

Greg Lucas (sustainability manager)- he will be supplying materials needed.
Julie (head of fundraising)
Ealaine Nevin (National director)
Cheryl Beckett (Dublin deputy)
Ealeen McCreaidie ( live lagoon programme)

Myself and Gabriel from T.Y. 2 went near the school entrance to greet them along with two of last year’s T.Y.s, they were very nice and excited to help with the garden. Gabriel and I guided them through the corridors in front of Mr. Kelleher’s room (who was very excited about the project), they talked about ideas and other areas that could be improved.

Some of the ideas for the garden are, having a footpath with some stepping stones and plants at the sides following up to a rounded area that will include circular seats ( weather permitting) and in the middle a round earth mound that has a solar water pump. Around the path would be a few of the following: stone gravel base, wellbeing messages on rockery beds, potted plants pallets, more plants and grass. Finally to top it all up, a griselinia hedge wall to surround the whole garden.

Mr. Kelleher and the two boys in fifth year took pictures with the garden organisers, in the corridors and on the stair in front of the first year corridor while holding square-wooden environmental pictures. This is a great opportunity for students to get hands-on experience in the dirt and using gardener tools. As a result, from now on every student will be able to sit down in the garden during lunch to eat, chat with friends or do homework.

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