Eco-Schools: Your Eco-Committee

Welcome to this video on Eco-Committees.

So you've just started your Eco-Schools Journey. The first thing you need to do is form an Eco-Committee. But what is an Eco-Committee and what do you need to do to create one?

Always remember when working on any part of Eco-Schools to not only think about what you are doing but why are you doing it. What is the purpose?

So why do you need an Eco-Committee? Your Eco-Committee are the leaders of your Eco-Schools work. Eco-Schools is a pupil-led award so an Eco-Committee allows pupils to take the lead. An Eco-Committee as a consistent group of people meeting to discuss Eco-Schools helping you to plan your actions. Your Eco-Committee should represent your whole school, helping to keep everyone involved.

So what could your Eco-Committee look like?

Well anyone can be a member of an Eco-Committee. Your Eco-Committee can be any size. You could have your whole school as an Eco-Committee, a single class, or elect representatives from multiple classes. You can include staff members parents and carers and community members if you wish.

Being in an Eco-Committee is a great opportunity to make new friends and learn new skills. So what skills are involved in being in an Eco-Committee? There are lots of tasks you will need to do including planning, and organising your Eco-Schools actions, usually using an action plan. You will need to carry out your plans involving as many people in your school as possible. You need to keep records of your actions to help you check your progress and see what you have achieved.

In order to do all of these tasks, you will need to be good listeners. You will need to communicate what you are doing with your whole school and local community. You need to share your responsibilities within your Eco-Committee. It may be a good idea to have defined roles for your committee members. And make sure that everyone in your school is included in your Eco-Schools work and can feed in their ideas to the committee. This may seem like a lot of skills but you don't need to have these already. This is what you will learn to do as an Eco-Committee member.

With all the skills we just discussed, you will be able to complete your responsibilities as an Eco-Committee. These include carrying out your Environmental Review, using this to create your Action Plan which you need to keep up to date, you need to measure and monitor the progress of your actions as you complete them.

Make sure you keep up good communication between yourselves and your school and community. This means telling them about what you are doing and listening to their thoughts and ideas.

At the end of your Green Flag Award period you can also help your Eco-Schools Coordinator to complete your Green Flag application.

Thank you for listening we wish you well on your Eco-Schools journey.