I can now proudly say that as a community, OSC has achieved the green flag award!

The Green Flag is an eco-schools accreditation that acknowledges, rewards, and celebrates the achievements in the community towards the environment and helping protect and same it.

But for now lets rewind and see how we got this accreditation. On the 23rd of November, we got together during last block for a meeting with 3 representatives from FEE, to present to them what we had done in the school to combat waste, climate change and help with the biodiversity of the campus. Aside from that we also had curriculum linkages and a message from our head of school Dr. Kleiss. We also invited Lexi to the meeting, who was the Eco-Schools leader before I came to school and started the group at OSC, to speak on the audit. Coming together and collaborating like this truly showed what a community we were within the school and how we work together to achieve our goals. It invites a lot of different perspectives having so many people in our service groups and being able to include people who differ in views about the topic to come together and work towards the same goal shows to me just how much we all strive to achieve a common goal.

We went through the slides one last time to smooth out anything we might have missed and prepared ourselves mentally.

Our meeting started with introductions before jumping right into it. Millan and Sam about our campus as well as some issues we’ve faced which were the reason we wanted to start Eco-Schools. We then handed over to Lexi to present the audit.

Then Huirong and Stefan presented on waste, before moving to climate change which was explained by Chathill, Sasindu and Senaya. The last set of student led slides were the biodiversity ones in which the primary students as well as Eco-Schools , Housing and Habitat and I spoke about. Throughout the presentation we were asked a multitude of unexpected questions but we had such an amazing team of quick thinking individuals who could quickly come up with answers backed by evidence.

We then handed over to the teachers for their curriculum linkages and then Dr. Kleiss gave a reflection of what we had achieved. She praised us for coming to her often to speak about our ideas and set them into motion as well as bring across how we managed to get an environmental considerate strand in the schools policy which is a big achievement.

After our presentation everyone breathed a sigh of relief and thanked each other for working so hard on this. And now the waiting game began.

We had to wait till the next week for the news, and it did arrive. We were very pleased to receive the fact that we had indeed received the green flag accreditation! During Fridays lunch we all came together to celebrate and figure out our next steps during a round of delicious cupcakes (thank you Mr Poulus!).

The next days flooded our inboxes with congratulations from teachers and students who took part. I am very thankful to have been able to be a part of this and it has truly shown me what we can achieve together as a community.

Doing this presentation sparked a lot of reflection within myself. I was constantly contemplating which idea was better and after many nights sleep kept finding different ways we could portray our achievements. I was very aware of my abilities and what I wasn’t able to do so I asked for help from others who were more experienced than me at certain parts in the presentation. They taught me the skills I lacked and I was able to grow as a person because of it.

(Featured Image Photo Credit: Mr Poulus)