Rotary Youth Competition Winners 2021: Young Environmentalist

Rotary in Great Britain and Ireland is delighted to announce the winners of the 2020/21 Young Environmentalist Competition.

The competition is an opportunity for young people to showcase their unique solutions to environmental problems and change the way we look, treat and interact with our environment.

Rotary Young Environmentalist is proudly sponsored by Veolia who also had a representative on the judge’s panel. The other two judges were Rebecca Warner who is a Projects Manager at Rotary GB&I and a dedicated to the environment Rotarian.

The main aim of this competition is to engage young people to interact with the environment, address serious issues, and develop and explore solutions to the problems of the theme.

The theme of the competition this year was ‘Climate Change and Carbon Reduction’ with a task to undertake a sustainability project that will make a difference.

Age groups have been set to allow for all participants to have a fair chance at winning and have equal skills as their peers. These consist of Junior (7-10 years), Intermediate (11-13 years) and Seniors (14-17 years).

Below are the competition winners, with summaries of the fantastic work they have undertaken for the competition:

Junior

Ravensthorpe Junior School

1^st Place – Ravensthorpe Primary School

• The team consisted of – Clark McConnell-Wilson, Dexter Hearn, Regen Ford and Kyra Dias.
• Ravensthorpe students have created a video on their Junior School’s work to reduce their impact on Climate change. This includes recycling, composting and even planting their vegetables.
• The students also help local businesses by reducing their outdoor furniture waste and offering it to an upcycling business.

Intermediate

Individual

1^st Place – Oliver Foster – Nominated by Stratford-upon-Avon Rotary Club

• Oliver is a representative from Kind Edward VI School in Stratford-upon-Avon.
• Oliver has focused his project on how trees reduce Carbon Dioxide pollution as well as how much of it they store. He has created a formula as well as designed a website to help calculate the details of carbon in individual trees through measurement. Isn’t that impressive?

Group

Wooden fence designates pathway through some fenlands

1^st Place – The Heron Team – Nominated by Cambridge Rotary Club

• The team from King’s College School consisted of – Nico Cordonier Gehring, Thomas Langford, Orlaith Traynor-Bucknall and Morgan Hayes.
• Team Heron have created action plans to target three main issues in their area- identifying and reducing local sources of greenhouse gas emissions, engaging schools for climate action and inspiring the society for action.
• The team have created a ‘Heron Habitat Helpers Handbook’ for schoolchildren to educate them about the Fenlands.
• As well as starting at their school directly the students have targeted the local County Council to declare a climate emergency and have regular contact with councillors to discuss solutions.
• They have been successful in attracting 300 registrants and have also applied to United Nations CoP26 Blue Zone Pavilion to share the project globally!

If you would like to participate in the 2021/22 event the theme is ‘Climate Change/Carbon Reduction’. For more information follow this link:

Youth Competitions – Our Projects – Rotary in Great Britain and Ireland (rotarygbi.org)