Winning School

The winners of the Appetite for Action competition are the Eco-Warriors from St Mark’s Church of England Primary School! For their fantastic entry they have won £3000 for their school and a visit from the Sky News team for the day.

The winning team made a super duper effort demonstrating a serious commitment to their chosen challenge to Get Growing.  The Eco-warriors organised a community dig where 18 volunteers got their hands dirty and helped prepare the raised beds for the vegetable seedlings. The team also encouraged other classes to get involved, with over 40 students taking part altogether. The Warriors activities included; investigating different habitats and learning about the secret life of bees; setting up a composting system;  making their own scarecrows; measuring water use (an excellent example of an Eco-Warriorism); and securing funding to create community allotments at the back of their school. The end results were a significant increase in the three key challenge measures.

 

Making the scarecrows

Keep off our veg!

 

Runners Up:

The Garden Gang from Topsham Primary School in Devon who wowed us with a suburb entry which awarded them runner up; they will receive £3000 for their school. The Gang got busy with parents from the school planting an array of vegetables and preparing beds. Their other activities included; selling their vegetables and using the money to expand their gardening projects; joining up with the local farm to use their poly tunnels; getting creative recycling old tyres, palettes and compost bins to plant in and letting their artistic juices show by painting African bags to brighten up the garden.

and

The Punkrock Polarbears Society from Portree Primary School on the Isle of Skye who submitted an impressive entry which awarded them runner up; they will receive £3000 for their school. The Punkrockers took on the Greener Grub challenge by revolutionising the school dinner system to reduce food waste, involving the pupils, teachers and cooks. Their other exciting actions included interviewing the school cooks; surveying 80 people’s pack lunches; reducing disposable packaging in packet lunches and holding healthy snack tasting sessions. They started the competition in style writing and performing their own songs advocating healthy lunches.

Well done to all the prize winning schools!

Also we’d like to say a big well done to all the other schools that entered, there were some brilliant entries which made the judging very difficult.  Your enthusiasm and hard work were not missed.  In fact, we wanted to recognise some other schools who’s Challenge actions inspired us:  

• Ysgol Caer Drewyn in Wales planted a large variety of vegetables as well as sunflowers to add some colour to their vegetable garden. 
• St. Joseph’ Strawberries from St Joseph’s RC Primary School used their own allotment grown lettuce to help feed their classmates in the school dinners. 
• The Eco-club team from Sandbach Community Primary created a compost bin from palettes donated from a local yard.
• The Galactic Green team from Brandon Boys school in Cork found great ways to reduce their rubbish; they organised litter squads and started a best bin competition. 
• The Year 6 Allotment team from Preston Park Primary school planted wildflowers to attract bees and ensured their garden was watered through the sunny period. 
• West Cornforth Primary school’s Eco Warriors joined up with a local gardening firm to help them plant vegetables and fruit in raised beds to out-do the local rabbits. 
• Lunch Box Mad from the Brigg Infant School held a healthy eating day which included discussing way to reduce packaging.

We hope to see you all again next year!