Over 1200 young people aged 7-21 were directly involved in environmental projects in schools and communities across the city and beyond as part of the Earth Day Heroes project, and 7685 were impacted, from Bristol to Bangladesh! 

120 of these young eco-heroes received their awards at the Awards ceremony at Sparks Bristol on 30th September.   

As well as sharing their winning ideas and projects, the young people were inspired by a talk from BBC presenter Naomi Wilkinson who shared how she had overcome her fear of sharks and spiders by getting up close and personal to them, and learning about how awesome wildlife and nature is. The winning schools also took part in an Aardman Animations clay modelling workshop, as well as receiving trophies, certificates and books for their school.

Projects were awarded prizes at Acorn level (good ideas, potential to grow), Sapling (good progress and showing great promise) to Mighty Oak for fully developed projects bearing fruit.

The 5 Mighty Oak projects were: 

• Fairfield School’s Park & Stride Scheme encourages families to drive their children to drop off points with students finishing their journey to school on foot together, reducing congestion and carbon emissions.
• Brunel Fields Primary Zero Carbon School project is helping their school reduce their energy use, grow food and hold regular litter picks.
• May Park Primary School’s Speaking Truth to Power project, presenting positive climate action solutions to business leaders and on the radio.
• Victoria Park Primary’s Project Power, monitoring and reducing energy use across the school, saving carbon and saving money.
• Dhamrai government college in Bangladesh for their tree planting and anti-plastic campaigning and activation, in college and the local community.

Other awards were given to Warmley Park School, Black 2 Nature, Somerdale Educate Together, Whitehall Primary, and Evergreen Primary. Young people have petitioned their teachers and carers, created vegetable gardens, recorded a rap, created artworks, monitored energy use and shared their passion with their local community to drive even more change for good. As the year 5 pupils at Brunel Fields Primary told us, “We really believe that, even though we’re kids, we can make a huge difference when it comes to climate change and making our world a better place”.

Thanks to funding from the Youth Climate Action Fund, groups could apply for micro grants to fund their projects, providing materials and mentoring to help make their ideas a reality. 

The new Better Uniforms Campaign was also launched at the Awards event, with the aim of Bristol being the first city to have ethical, affordable and plastic-free uniforms. To register your interest, or to book an interactive sustainability workshop at Sparks please visit Education Workshops | Global Goals or email workshops@sparksbristol.co.uk

The Earth Day Heroes awards are run by Global Goals Centre in partnership with Green Schools Project, Black 2 Nature and Bristol Education Partnership, and will now be an annual competition to inspire even more action for nature, wellbeing and community. To find out more visit Earth Day Heroes | Global Goals