Informing and Involving the Community

The Eco-Committee is a passionate and committed group of students spanning Grades 5 to 12, with the faculty and parents supporting the students in their endeavours. Together we collaborate to improve Prem’s sustainability practices across the entire school. As part of this process, we are hoping to receive accreditation for our efforts from Eco-Schools – a global organisation that specialises in supporting and rewarding schools through the presentation of a coloured flag. Within this accreditation system, Green Flag is the highest sustainability award possible, followed by silver and then bronze. Usually, it takes schools two years to achieve Green Flag status, and as Prem’s Eco-Committee has just entered its second year, we’d like to think we’re on track for achieving a bronze or silver award this year.

Prem’s accreditation visit will take place on Monday, October 31st and we are very busy preparing for this. We hope we can seize this opportunity to shine a light on all of Prem’s fantastic sustainability initiatives through our rich curriculum, expansive Exploria programme, and in the campus itself. With the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) releasing just last week The Living Planet report showing a shocking 69% decrease in global wildlife populations from 1970-2022, our efforts here at Prem are critical in playing our part in improving our relationships with other species and giving environmental issues our collective urgent attention.

When we first conducted the environmental survey last year, we noticed that our Prem community was not always sure about what we do to respond to environmental issues. As a result, the Eco-Committee has worked hard all last year and so far this year to increase communication across the school. Our guiding inquiry question has always been ‘What would it take to create a communication system to support the sharing of sustainability information across the Prem community?’

This question has given the Eco-Committee the impetus to consider the ways in which sustainability information is shared within and across the community. As such, each member of the Eco-Committee has taken the lead on a different communication channel and together we have viewed ourselves as one buzzing system, all contributing toward improving communication across Prem. We have social media leads, journalists, photographers, a website designer, videographers, project leaders, animators, visual display leads, presenters and of course, our amazingly talented Eco-Committee ‘executive leadership’ team, who take the lead on the organisation and leadership of the group through their roles as Co-Chair and Secretary (and make sure to oversee all efforts, including communication).

It is a great privilege of mine to work alongside this intergenerational group of learners who have consistently shown up for meetings, completed their duties alongside their busy school work, demonstrated kindness towards others at all times, and shown great confidence and creativity when presenting their individual and group ideas to various audiences. They are the living and breathing enactment of Prem’s mission and vision!

Throughout the year, each student has played a vital role, and as such, I am very pleased to share that in the academic year 2021-2022, the Eco-Committee created the following communication pieces:

1 visual display board

10 Community News posts

17 Social Media Posts for Prem

3 Faculty presentations

4 Junior School assembly presentations; 1 Senior School assembly presentation

1 PSC presentation

17 Social Media Posts for Traidhos Three Generation (TTG)

This makes a total of 54 communication pieces in one academic year! Wow! I am SO PROUD of this group of students!

For this academic year, we have a lot of plans in motion already, including the following: more videos, more communications in languages other than English, a website launch, greater involvement of the school board, more community events for sustainability, increase of signage across campus, a Prem Eco-Code, and hopefully….the first Prem TedEd Sustainability event!

Here are some photos of our most recent actions, and I hope you will all stay tuned to learn more about what we are doing here at Prem to improve sustainability practices across our community.

One of the Eco-Committee’s current projects is to reduce the amount of paper wastage across the school. Community members can now add waste paper to these locally-sourced baskets and they will be collected by our wonderful housekeeping staff for recycling. Many thanks to Marie, G8, for leading on this initiative!