The One World Centre in Dundee received the award – raised from the 5p plastic bag charge and administered by Groundwork UK working with Greenspace Scotland – which has enabled a partnership approach to be developed involving the local YMCA, Grove Academy, Eastern Primary School and a professional artist.
As one of six development education centre’s based across Scotland, the One World Centre is keen to explore innovative ways to engage young people in important questions of global justice including where our food comes from, who controls the supply of food globally and why some are denied access to food.
“Our aim is to inspire youngsters to take an interest in often complex issues – including food justice, Fair Trade and food sustainability”
Community garden
The project involves S2 and S3 pupils from Grove Academy directly supporting the development of a new community garden space within their local area. The school has negotiated two periods on a Friday morning for this project, which as a first stage has seen the pupils design and create a mural and pallet garden at the YMCA in Broughty Ferry, Dundee. The mural depicts images of plants and flowers native to the area, alongside representations of locally grown food.
Neil Crutchley, Global Learning Development Worker at the One World Centre, said: “Our aim is to inspire youngsters to take an interest in often complex issues – including food justice, Fair Trade and food sustainability- by using outdoor garden spaces creatively. Young people have been involved in all stages of the mural and pallet garden design process and have made their own scarecrow from sustainable materials as an added bonus!”
Peer led learning
The next stage of the project will involve young people from Grove Academy working with Eastern Primary pupils on the garden development as a fantastic peer learning opportunity. The finished garden will be used by all ages to explore ecological issues and sustainability, so it will benefit the whole community.
The finished garden will be used by all ages to explore ecological issues and sustainability.
Alongside learning more about issues of sustainability, pupils from Grove identified other benefits from their participation: “developing my thinking and creative skills”, “skills in organisation and design” (Scarecrow project). “Learning how to be a supportive team member and skills in research”. “I used my communication skills”, “Listening to others”.
These are skills which are transferable to a variety of settings.
The project is one of a number supported by the One World Centre and designed to inspire young people to develop their own school garden spaces, learning about issues of consumerism, justice and encouraging a sense of responsibility as global citizens.
For more information on how your school can get involved in Tesco’s Bags of Help initiative, please visit www.tesco.com/bagsofhelp
Support in making an application can be found here: http://greenspacescotland.org.uk/
To contact the One World Centre for more about the garden projects: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.