News from the Campaign
  British Council’s Connecting Classrooms and our Carbon footprint
 


Over 150 district education authorities officers and representatives, head teachers and teachers from Sub-Saharan Africa including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Sudan, Zambia, Malawi and the UK met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Mombasa, Kenya in July for Contact Seminars in a unique opportunity to forge closer links and to build greater cultural understanding between their different communities as part of the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms project.

Sustainable partnerships were created based on equity, curiosity, open dialogue, respect and valuing difference. The schools and district authorities will develop collaborative learning through joint curriculum projects, which will engage the students, teachers and communities in important global issues such as climate change, drugs and health, HIV/AIDS awareness, literacy including story-telling, arts and culture, life skills, entrepreneurial and business skills, ICT skills, global citizenship amongst others.

A highlight of the seminars included tree planting events to offset the carbon print created by the participants travelling. In Ethiopia, the delegates were escorted by students from some of the schools in the Entoto Hills in Addis Ababa where there is a nationwide project initiated by the government to cut the abundant eucalyptus trees and replace them with indigenous trees, in an effort to control land degradation. A total of 400 seedlings were planted on that day. .

In Mombasa, the delegates were hosted by Shimo La Tewa primary and other partner schools where over 200 trees seedlings of Casuarina trees were planted. 100 extra trees seedlings were planted in the following week during a regional training workshop bringing together over 35 staff from Connecting Classrooms project in Sub-Saharan Africa and the UK.

Connecting Classrooms is committed to the United Nations Environment Programme ‘Save the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign’ and all partner schools and district authorities plant and nature a minimum of eight trees per person for each international journey undertaken
In the partnership with United Nations Environment Programme, our schools have taken part in the various sponsored competitions on environment including the ‘TUNZA’ Youth Conferences and this August several of students in Sub-Saharan Africa were selected to take part in the global Tunza conference in South Korea.

For more information please contact: Joe Lemaron, Communications Manager Connecting Classrooms
E-mail: Joe.Lemaron@britishcouncil.or.ke