Giving students power to create new world

Lifestyle – A Galway organisation that offers support and education to young people throughout Ireland who are being faced with climate change and global pollution, is attracting international attention. The voluntary group which works with secondary schools wants sustainability to become a cornerstone of the Irish education system, as its founders tell JUDY MURPHY.

Galway is a place where creativity and enterprise have long been to the fore and which has developed an international reputation for its artistic life, observes Mícheál Ó Cinneide.

The former director of the Environmental Protection Agency who previously worked in the Marine Institute in Rinville, Oranmore, believes Galway can become a leader in the drive for sustainable living too.

He is one of those helping to make that happen, via the voluntary group Eco Ed 4 All which works with Transition Year classes across Ireland to put environmental awareness at the heart of the school curriculum.

The 12-strong Eco Ed 4 All group includes teachers, scientists, technology experts and community advocates, all of them giving their time for free to help empower future generations protect planet Earth.

It’s a blustery day in Salthill as Mícheál outlines his vision, appropriately enough, out of doors. But rain or wind can’t dampen his enthusiasm nor that of John O’Sullivan, whose day job is as an environmental advisor with SSE Airtricity and whose passion is creating environmental awareness.

From a farming background, John graduated with a degree in Physics from NUIG, followed by a Master’s from Queen’s University, Belfast after which he spent 12 years working in the microchip industry in Silicon Valley.

“I always wanted to return home and do something that would make a difference,” he explains.

He’s fulfilling that wish through Eco Ed 4 All, an organisation that grew out of another voluntary group, the Corrib Beo Trust. Corrib Beo was set up in 2018 to create a vision for Lough Corrib and its catchment area. The aim of Corrib Beo is to nurture community and culture in tandem with the natural environment, explains Denis Goggin of Galway Salvage Yard, who is also involved.

Lough Corrib is an extraordinary treasure, he says, but one that’s under threat. Ensuring its future health requires broad involvement. Among those at the inaugural meeting of Corrib Beo was Colette Flanagan, a science teacher in Presentation College, Headford.

Colette was keen to nurture the educational dimension of Corrib Beo, and a group coalesced around her to explore that area.  They developed a programme that she rolled out in Headford’s secondary school, but they didn’t realise at the time that it would become the template for something much bigger.

“The only way to deliver change for the Corrib is education,” says John, explaining that feedback from that rollout helped Eco Ed 4 All to evolve.

“Then we thought, ‘all school live around water catchment areas’, and realised the programme could be modified for other places,” he adds of the decision to go national.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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