RCE North East - www.rcenortheast.eu

North East Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) in Education for Sustainable Development (EfSD) is a network of education organisations convened around specific projects intended to develop and deliver EfSD at the local level. It is part of a global network of RCEs created to achieve the goals of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), by identifying the relevance of its global objectives to the communities in the North East. The goal of the ‘Decade’ is to integrate the principles, values and practices of sustainable development into all aspects of education and learning.

RCE global network brings together institutions at the regional level to build new platforms to share information and experiences, to engage in dialogue through educational partnership, and to promote better access to quality education, environmental stewardship, social justice, and improvement of quality of life.

Footprint Friends [www.footprintfriends.com]

Footprint Friends calls all Young People, parents and influencers to sign up and get involved in this social networking site. We all leave footprints and we need to demonstrate that people around the world do actually care about our future generations and the state of the planet both now and in the future.  Through Footprint Friends we can join as one loud voice.  If you think about what ‘climate change’ could mean to you, think about this: We can share information all over the world and by our numbers take part in the decision making for all of our futures.

Seeds for Schools [www.seedsforschools.org]

The ‘Seeds for Schools’ campaign has provided every school in the UK with around 12 million tree seeds in total during spring 2009 for cultivating, planting out and caring for.  The initiative is being led by the News of the World and the Forestry Commission, who is providing the millions of Scots pine, alder and silver birch seeds.  Once cultivated, the young trees can be planted out either in school grounds or in appropriate places nearby, such as public greenspaces, parks, churchyards or sites made available by other owners. 

And the Climate Change Schools Project has played an integral role in developing the educational materials for ‘Seeds for Schools’!  Climate Change Lead Schools teachers Lucy Turton (Dr. Thomlinson CoE Middle School), Angela Ali (Grange Park Primary School), Rose Fletcher and Christina Ward (Edmondsley Primary School), Alan Scarr (The Grove Primary School), Gavin Hill (Seaton Burn Community School) and Donna Dawson (Bydales School) have all worked together to produce the creative and cross-curricular teaching materials for ‘Seeds for Schools’.  Teaching materials will be made available to schools all over the UK through the ‘Seeds for Schools’ website.

Visit www.seedsforschools.org to access teaching materials, support the campaign and report on progress.