It’s Valentine’s Day so I thought I would catch up with a school that has a love for The DoNation! 

We have partnered with People & Planet – a student led movement – for their Go Green Week.  On Tuesday we spoke to Swansea University and today we thought we’d catch up with Josh from Bedales School.  They are another institute successfully getting students Doing, with the help of some really inovative ideas. They made it to the top of the leaderboard the other day, because of their pledged carbon savings. Read on to find out more about how they are getting people involved.

Tell us what have you enjoyed so far?

We had a really successful Meat Free Lunch on Monday, and a bake sale to raise money to buy paper brick makers to recycle some of the school’s paper. At the bake sale we also had various green devices, such as an electricity generator bike and electricity meters attached to various appliances to demonstrate electricity usage.

What has been the uptake?

We have made a few notices to the whole school to publicise the week along with posters and emails, and the uptake has been very good so far. Most people seemed positive about the meat free lunch, and we are going to do a questionnaire to ask people what they thought about the whole week on Thursday.

What have people been saying about The DoNation?

Very positive, a good initiative and a strong motivator for people. A simple and effective solution to persuade people to actively think about everything they do and what impact this has on their carbon emissions.

What have you found has helped you get pledges/what’s been successful?

We’ve sent emails mostly, and there are posters around the whole school in various places. The emails have been the most effective as people can check their emails and easily make a pledge on The DoNation site.

What have you got planned for the rest of the week?

Yesterday we cleared waste boxes in the dining hall so that people could see their waste, and making them aware of what they were chucking away (it is usually chucked into a bin bag that is hidden away out of sight). We’re also looking at making this a permanent feature of the dining hall if possible.

Today we’re having a switch off day, and we’re encouraging teachers to do as much teaching without a computer as possible, and also without unnecessary lighting.

Tomorrow we’re having a review of the whole week with the questionnaire, from which we hope to make some permanent changes to the way in which aspects of the school are run.

Sounds like it’s going to have been a really successful week.  You can check out all the universities, schools and colleges that are involved with Go Green Week here