Climate Change Project
Every year, Europe Direct Victoria Gozo in collaboration with EkoSkola/YRE/LEAF, Nature Trust - FEE Malta organizes an Award Scheme open exclusively to schools in Gozo enrolled in the FEE programmes. Our school participates annually, and luckily enough, Europe Direct (Gozo) had already announced the topics for the following year’s competition, one of them being “Climate Change”. This was a clear confirmation for us that this was a topic worth tackling.
From our initial research we discovered that there is a lot WE can do to make a difference to keep the Earth healthy by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere, and decreasing the amount of plastic which ends up in the sea, to the detriment of sea creatures. So we therefore drafted a survey which could be filled in by the students themselves at home. In this way they could be more aware of the harm they were unknowingly causing.
Students were asked to return the completed survey by the end of June, so that data could be collected and analysed. Among the things which had to be noted, we focused on travel (on foot, by car or by public transport), the use of aerosol sprays around the house, LED vs incandescent bulbs, use of plastic, and finally since we became aware that electronics use energy even when they are turned off, we checked how many plugged items we found around the house even when they were not in use. We collected 192 surveys from a total of 211 (91%) which was extremely encouraging.
Analyzing them, we could see that we needed to work harder in our homes to reduce our carbon footprint and so we needed to take action by sharing our findings and promise to strive to make a positive impact through some changes we needed to make around the house. The same survey will then be carried out once again at the end of scholastic year 2020/2021, hoping to find that we have shown some improvement in our way of living.
After 2 years (instead of the initial 1 year gap we had planned) we once again surveyed the situation in our households and in our classrooms. There was a slight drop in the number of questionnaires returned by the parents (87% to the previous 91%), however the improvement in the attention given to the environment is significant, particularly the attention to switching off plugs when electrical items are not in use.
Mr Christian Saliba, the GLOBE link teacher offered to give a helping hand with a Mural we had decided to create on the wall of the Main School Yard. He made a draft on how it could be designed, and this was approved by the students council. Students took it in turns to help out in the production of this new Mural.