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With many employers providing time for their staff to volunteer in their community as part of ESG programmes, and the Department for Education (DfE) warning that school leavers do not understand net zero or climate mitigation solutions, employees across the UK can use their volunteering days to help.
As part of their Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy, the DfE expects all education settings in England from early years to post-16 to have a Sustainability Lead and Climate Action Plan in place by the end of 2025.
The sustainability lead can request support from a volunteer Climate Ambassador, one of the DfE-funded initiatives supporting this work.
There are already more than 800 registered Climate Ambassadors, but the programme is keen to recruit more volunteers to widen the range of skills and experiences for settings to draw on, and IEMA members are ideally placed to offer this support.
As a Climate Ambassador, you’ll support one or more education setting to develop and deliver their Climate Action Plan, which cover:
Volunteers can offer support in any one or all of these four areas – wherever they have the most interest or feel they have the most to contribute.
As well as making the most of a volunteer’s own interest and experience, Climate Ambassadors offers a range of high-quality training, resources and regional support hubs. The registration process is simple and the programme also supports volunteers to develop skills in several areas, including planning, presenting, influencing and teamwork.
The DfE recently concluded: “If climate education is to raise awareness of green careers and, more generally, to increase hope in our ability to take collective climate action, increased awareness of mitigation and adaptation strategies [amongst school leavers] is vitally important”.
For IEMA members who are interested in delivering the ‘climate education and green careers’ theme in a secondary school classroom setting, please consider using the new ‘Tackling Climate Change’ classroom engagement developed by EngineeringUK.
EngineeringUK is a national charity working with schools and industry to inspire and encourage young people into STEM careers. Its head of sustainability is Mike Hardisty, who, with the help of Climate Ambassadors Sean McQuaid and Arran Prothero, developed and tested Tackling Climate Change in schools.
He explains: “Tackling Climate Change takes 11–14-year-olds on a journey from fossil fuels to green careers in engineering and technology, using quizzes, activities, discussions and presentations. It’s been successfully piloted with over 600 pupils and offers sustainability professionals a fun and rewarding volunteering opportunity.
“The session can be tweaked by the Climate Ambassador to include, for example, their own career story and what inspired them. To get to net zero by 2050, the UK will need many more engineers and technologists.”
The EngineeringUK resources and training materials can all been found here.
Michael Hardisty CEnv, MIEMA, head of environmental sustainability, EngineeringUK, MHardisty@engineeringuk.com
Jane Dickson –partnerships manager, Climate Ambassadors, jdickson@eauc.org.uk
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