A new climate education project is funded.
Crichton Carbon Centre announces their new climate education project has been awarded funding by Robin Rigg Community Fund, administered by Solway Firth Partnership.
The Solway Firth is predicted to rise between 30-32.5cm by 2100 (see interactive map) – and much of that rise will happen well within the lifetimes of our current primary school cohorts. Beyond sea level rise, our coasts and oceans face many threats from climate change and human activity. We must educate and prepare our young people to face, mitigate, and adapt to these changes.
CCC is thrilled to have been awarded funding by the Robin Rigg Community Fund and hopes to work with all primary schools within their Dumfries and Galloway catchment (see here). This project aims to increase pupil knowledge of how their local area and community may be affected in the future and, crucially, how to take climate action. We hope that the pupils will share what they learn with their families and communities, becoming local changemakers and climate champions.
This project will bring climate education to many schools that Crichton Carbon Centre hasn’t engaged with before, or for a long time, ensuring that high quality climate education is available for as many young people in Dumfries and Galloway as possible – working alongside many organisations and individuals across the region to achieve this.
We’re also keen to continue exploring how we can best deliver climate education in a way that has pupil wellbeing at the centre, asking the question ‘how can we build knowledge in a way that empowers pupils, rather than in a way that risks scaring or overwhelming them?’ This is at the core of our education strategy and informs all our educational projects and communications moving forward.
“We already have one workshop developed and ready to be delivered, which we used in Biosphere Explorers 2 and our early project Carbon Busters,” Education officer Carys says. “It’s a science experiment around ocean acidification, which demonstrates how shelled sea life can be eroded by acidic conditions. While we wait for the experiment to run, we also play the Greenhouse Gas Board Game, which gives examples of climate actions we can take to protect our oceans.”
Our Coast and Climate Change will run from this February to the end of 2023. We want to thank Robin Rigg Community Fund, administered by Solway Firth Partnership, once again for supporting our project.