An Taisce - Environmental Education Unit

BACKGROUND

An Taisce works to preserve and protect Ireland’s natural and built heritage. An Taisce is an independent charitable voice. The Environmental Education Unit is responsible for some of Ireland’s most popular and successful environmental programmes, including Green-Schools, Green-Campus, Clean Coasts, National Spring Clean, Neat Streets, Green Communities, Learning about Forests and the Blue Flag award.

All programmes delivered by An Taisce - EEU deal directly with education for sustainable development, which is intrinsically linked to development education particularly in the area of climate justice and global justice issues (such as water shortages, transport use, waste, energy and consumption habits).

Citizenship education is at the heart of all our programmes, educating schools, community groups and businesses on their rights and responsibilities. All these programmes deliver behavioural and attitudinal change and empower people to take action, creating real change.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Green-Schools is Ireland’s leading environmental management and education programme for schools. Promoting long-term, whole-school action for the environment, Green-Schools is a student-led programme with involvement from the wider community. The programme is operated and co-ordinated by the Environmental Education Unit of An Taisce (FEE member for Ireland). Green-Schools is operated in partnership with Local Authorities and is supported by many government departments and agencies. More than 4,000 schools are involved with green flags flying proudly at school gates all over Ireland.

The Green-Schools programme has a strong focus on the 17 Goals for Sustainable Development and take into account the main message ‘No one left behind’ We continuously strive to stimulate action with the pupils and staff in our partner schools in relation to the Global Goals.

The Global Citizenship theme, incorporated in the Green-Schools programme in the past five years, builds on previous efforts to embed development education principles into the overall strategy of the programme. The structure, aims and objectives of the Green-Schools programme provides a suitable and effective model for delivering development education in conjunction with environmental and sustainable development principles.

Some of the Projects involved include:

• #andshecycles, a campaign to encourage girls to get back on their bikes, and to address some of the issues which make them to reluctant to cycle
• the Water Ambassador programme
• Seakeepers, which focuses on six of Ireland’s marine species
• The Great Plant Hunt, a one year biodiversity programme