Ever heard of the Green School Initiatives? What do you think that’s all about? Well, this article has it all covered for you.
The Green School Initiatives was established in 2004. And it all began when some concerned parents observed the unhealthy environmental state of institutions their kids belonged to. They came together to purposefully deal with the issue.
Founded in the U.S. Green School Initiatives seeks to attain ecological sustainability by encouraging green actions in schools, and educating on environmental awareness, thus protecting children’s health.
Schools that have been impacted by this initiative are often referred to as Green Schools.
Now, let’s delve deeper into the subsequent subheadings below.
Green School Initiatives
Green School Initiatives are ideas springing up to make the academic environment more conducive and safe for learning by shaping future generations’ attitudes towards sustainability. A lot of writers for research papers have been involved in rigorous research to understand this initiative. Let’s see what it means here.
It involves the setting up of policies, plans, actions, and professional development that leads to greater efficiency and effectiveness of schools. With the Green School Initiatives, the leading founders have the strong idea to transform schools into a haven for community development, impacting youth and enhancing development in schools and their overall operations.
Schools that subscribe to this initiative are called Green Schools.
How Green School Initiatives Work
Green School Initiatives thrive via training. The following category of people are trained:
- Teachers
- Parents
- Facility Directors
- School Board Members & others.
The Green School Initiatives seeks to eradicate problems associated with environmental status in schools. They provide tools and facilities that create a healthy environment whether it’s planting a school garden or setting up recycling programs thus eliminating toxins. Much more than that, this initiative provides environmental education to member schools via well-trained experts.
Right now, let’s examine the impact of green initiatives on schools.
Impact of Green School Initiatives
All over America, green projects for schools by Green School Initiatives have improved employment rates, created financial opportunities transformed health and fostered ecological advancement.
Green school ideas have helped to curb various health issues arising from the following:
- Greenhouse gas emissions
- Tons of garbage and toxic waste
- Various unhealthy conditions in schools
You might be thinking: how do ‘green school initiatives’ achieve this impact?
The green school initiatives redefine school models for sustainability and community development. They bring youths together, creating an eco-friendly classroom, educating them on environmental issues, ideating and creating actions to improve health, sustain facilities and operations within schools.
This massive impact is traceable to Deborah Moore’s achievement as a mother and environmental scientist. She’s therefore pivotal to the Green Schools Initiative being the Co-Founder and Executive Director.
She rides on her expertise of twenty years of working experience at the Environment and Social Justice Organizations in the US and internationally. Also, she served at the Environmental Defense Fund for 14 years. There, she developed experience in water and river quality, and having conversations around water.
Green School Initiatives’ impacts would be impossible without the contribution of dedicated parents, teachers, staff, and school board members who volunteered to implement the programs in their communities. This has kept the initiative thriving and progressing to date.
Green School initiatives go beyond the primary goal of training, support and advocacy for health and environmental sanity in schools.
They go into strategic partnerships with other educational institutions, environments and health businesses creating a dynamic flow of operations to help them thrive.
Up next, in the subhead below, we want to examine 6 ways to make your school green.
6 Ways for Creating a Green School
In this section, we’ll reveal 6 of the ways Green School Initiatives make schools green.
Let’s check them out.
- Establishing a Green Team (With a Vision)
The Green team is the first thing they set up, to maintain order and progress in the school. Stakeholders and interested participants are identified and the team is formed.
Also, a unique vision statement is crafted to reinforce the end goal of the initiative as peculiar to each school.
Teachers, parents and students are equally involved in these activities.
- Conduct Environmental School Audit
This is done to identify areas of interest the school needs to approach with a greater sense of urgency.
With a survey or an audit, you can make a list of things in levels of their relevant importance, to be dealt with to make schools greener.
- Implement a Green School Action Plan
Results from environmental audit helps to identify the green ideas to make the school green – improve health and environmental performance as well as improve academics.
Such goals should be deliberate and long-term. For instance, it could include promotion and provision of:
- Recycling programs in schools
- Eco-friendly, non-toxic cleaning materials
- Carpooling; energy conservation like turning off lights, computer monitors and printers; or
- A school garden
- Track and Evaluate Progress
The Green team could create a sub-team to monitor and evaluate progress on priority action plans. Various indexes should be used to effectively track and analyze the performance of activities and to determine the level of progress being recorded.
Possible measures to track progress could include conducting yearly environmental checks to assess waste level, recycling, energy use and purchase of environmental products, amongst others.
These data collection and documentation help to track the effort of the initiative and it gives a sense of understanding of the goals of the Green School Initiative as facts will prove its contribution and relevance.
- Make Green School Initiative a Curriculum to Be Studied
Encouraging the study of the initiative will help to foster the adoption of practices that will aid environmental awareness.
Therefore, utilizing periods of extracurricular activities to sensitize students will go a long way to promote the activity of the Green School Initiative.
As a result, it’ll be easy for members to understand topics such as energy, forests, toxic pollution, and waste. Also, the students will be directly exposed to initiatives, and could intelligently supply more as it relates to saving water and energy, and recycling.
- Celebrate Achievement
Efforts of participants, teams and outstanding contributors should be well appreciated and celebrated. This is a vital part of the Green School program. It aids in effective collaboration and enlargement in partnership and support.
Thus, everyone loves to be appreciated. There should be a publication or publicity program that details the journey of the progress made from the beginning. This creates unity showcases the uniqueness of the initiative and could bring in more approval in neighboring communities.
In conclusion
The green school initiative is established to bring about environmental awareness to impact educational and community development. By combining environmental education into the curriculum, the student can embrace eco-friendly practices in their daily lives. Moreover, everything you should know about the origin, existence and progress of the green school initiative is found in the information we’ve explored. We believe you’d find them useful.
Cover image: photo via Pexels
