We are delighted to share a blog written by student Jack Clark from WCSA, who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2019-20 Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 957 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
Working with GSL has opened our group up to so many more opportunities and made our work more recognised in our town.
Project Overview
Climate Justice Revolution (CJR) has one simple aim. To reduce the effects of global climate change. We live in an at risk area for flooding if our sea levels rise to the expected levels, putting our lives and our town at risk. Even in recent months we’ve seen heavy rainfall cause flooding in surrounding areas such as the Somerset Levels which are often flooded, but climate change has caused these events to be more frequent and more adverse.
Students at WCSA were inspired by Greta Thunberg’s famous movement but were concerned over losing crucial school time. So we established CJR in the summer of 2019. We now meet every Thursday for an hour, where we organise our jobs and plan projects.
Due to our belief that we should help the climate crisis anyway we can, CJR has a flexible project plan. We plan to do as much as we can to help. This means we will do anything from starting school-wide discussions and running charity events to taking part in schemes and taking part in rewilding projects.
Our Journey
The skill I’ve personally developed the most since joining CJR is my passion for public speaking. Not long after CJR started, we attended the GSL Inspire event where I had the chance to speak in front of an audience for the first time with my fellow team member, Hannah. Although it was petrifying to stand up in front of many people who I had never met, I found that as I continued to do it, I started to enjoy standing in front of audiences and talking about the issues I was passionate. I’ve since hosted 10 separate assemblies about our work with the latest being about the Global Goals competition.
As a team, I believe we’ve developed a better sense of team work and also learning to respect each others ideas. At first, we were unproductive and repeatedly off task whereas now we are organised, focused and respectful with each of us having individual roles best suited to us.
I think our biggest challenge is going to be pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones. We want to be able to push ourselves and experience new things while completing our project so we’ll take risks that we wouldn’t usually take and we’ll take part in projects that we’re not always the most comfortable with.
We’ve also launched an eco-council at WCSA. The council was requested by our Principal who attends the meetings. We discuss current climate issues and also scrutinise school policies that could have an affect on the environment while also suggesting new methods of reducing our carbon footprint.
The Next Chapter
CJR’s slogan is ‘Fighting for our future’. We believe that for us to be able to have the same opportunities our parents did in the future, we need to fight climate change which can lead us to solving more world problems.
CJR does our best to encourage young people to join our movement or start their own. We are currently planning assemblies towards younger children in our partner primary schools to explain the importance of reducing the affects of climate change. We also work with teachers from our Leadership Team to spread or message across WCSA and beyond.
Our belief is that if you have a worthy cause that you believe in, then you should be able to have the opportunity to help that cause.
We plan to incorporate the Global Goals in more of our projects across WCSA to show students the wide range of problems that need solving and how they can make a difference.
The 2019-20 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2020. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
