Niall raises Brannockstown's green
When Brannockstown NS was recently awarded its first Green Flag, they called on Irish football icon Niall Quinn to do the raising honours.
To get the Green Flag, the School had to implement seven steps. These involved setting up the committee, making an environmental review of the school, developing an action plan, monitoring and evaluating its implementation, some curriculum work, involving everybody, and learning the Green Code.
The original impetus came in 2004 and the inaugural committee worked on a number of projects, including making compost, recycling school supplies and waste packaging, as well as mobile phones and electrical items.
A subsequent committee came up with a slogan competition -- 'The Green Team is our Name and Being Clean is our Game' was the winning one from Tara Fitzgerald.
The book of application was submitted to An Taisce and the school's work was evaluated by Kildare County Council on their behalf. The Council's representative also gave advice on how to improve.
As part of the project, the pupils used the compost they made to fertilise a garden in which they grew potatoes, strawberries, lettuce and herbs. They cleaned out a pond and fed birds as part of the overall scheme, and a 'walking bus' pilot scheme involved the students along with their parents and teachers in walking from a set point outside the village rather than being driven there.
The pupils are clear that this isn't the end of the work. The next stage is to work towards achieving a Green Flag for energy.
Mrs Audrey Finnegan, the school coordinator with the current committee, emphasised that it had been a project involving all the pupils of the school. "Without them it wouldn't have happened," she said.
Esther Reddy said it was an achievement not only for the school, but for the whole community.
Brannockstown Community Committee Chairman Steve Schwer complimented all who had been involved in the school project and said the wider community was very proud of them.
"I hope this award will bring home to the children the importance of the environment and recycling," he said, "and that the good ideas in this project will be brought into their adult life. It's a great day for the school and a wonderful one for the village of Brannockstown."
Green Flag Committee member for 2008 Tara Fitzgerald said the project 'wasn't that hard when we had everybody helping'. "As we went on with it, it got easier to do," she said. Gemma Carey described how they had to 'encourage everybody to put stuff in the right bins', while Colm O'Brien noted that the effort for the next Green flag will involve looking at transport and fuel issues, 'and using less energy in our classrooms'.
Niall Quinn said that as well as all the environmental issues, the students would take from this project the importance of teamwork in their lives.
"You'll understand the importance of a team and that all its components must work together," he said. "Sometimes at Sunderland we don't do it all the time, but we try very hard, and we know that teams that do it right have an entire team that works together."
Using household names from his own career like Ronaldo and Denis Irwin and Paul McGrath, he made the point that it was often the quiet and unassuming ones who could be far more important than 'the ones that were saying everything'.
"Everyone must have their say, and you can learn an awful lot from that," he concluded.
Brian Byrne.
