Agenda 21 and Green Schools

Uphall Primary and Aldersbrook Primary School connected over video conference to share ideas for green initiatives at their schools. The eco friendly pupils spoke about recycling paper, school grounds and their outdoor gardening areas. They also learnt about Barkingside 21 their local environmental group:  https://barkingside21.blogspot.co.uk/

About Barkingside 21
We started life in the spring of 1997 as a pilot project run by Redbridge Strategic Services. This was part of a government funded programme that arose from the environment summit in 1992, which took place in Rio de Janeiro. The big idea was that we need a bottom up approach to the environment and community resilience where local communities are enabled to decide and act for themselves instead of the usual prescriptive top down approach. The Agenda 21 is the Agenda for sustainable living in the 21st century.

The council engaged with residents over a two-year period via workshops and meetings to produce a Community Action Plan on what they felt should be done and this was published in 1999.

At this point we were set free and became an independent body with an elected committee and constitution, receiving a modest start up grant from the Bridge Foundation.

This coincided with the proposal for a Racetrack on Fairlop Waters and this one issue dominated the group for a couple of years, so much so, that we almost lost sight of our original purpose. Once that issue died down, and was eventually resolved, we gradually branched out into more varied community activities and campaigns.