Welcome To Our Global Gang Page! 

We are an after school club who care about making St Matthew's a planet-friendly school. We have done lots of different activities this year.  Read on to find out more about what we have done and are planning... Would YOU like to join Global Gang?

Be a climate activist even at home!

Click on the link below to go to Young Climate Warriors - every week there is a new challenge which you can take part in at home.  From baking palm oil free biscuits to drying the washing on the line, there is so much climate activism you can do at home!

900 Magic Carbon Capture machines are appearing all over the school field!

By Eva-Tate.

What magic machine supports many species of animals and plants; stops soil erosion; helps cool the area around it; looks beautiful; provides somewhere for children to play and ALSO sucks carbon out of the atmosphere and locks it away?  

A tree, of course!  To help with the planting trees movement,  Year 6 and reception planted tree saplings in the school field along with children from Chapel Allerton Primary.  In total we are planting 900 trees (and hedge plants), one for every child in both schools!

Did you know…?

There are over three trillion trees in the world. Humans have nearly halved that since the Industrial revolution. And we currently lose 15 billion trees each year to paper ,timber and other human needs. But not on our school field!

But there is something even better than planting trees in Chapel Allerton.  Something that captures carbon even quicker?  Can you guess what it is?

Planting trees in a tropical zone!  We also had a non-uniform day to raise money to help children in Nicaragua to plant 900 trees just like us! 

COP 27 – Running out of time!

by Tiarraa Jaizal

Do you remember the time that Fabian Hamilton, the local Member of Parliament, came to school for COP 27?

In COP 26 [26th Conference of Parties] there was a lot of talking but not enough action. This year for Cop27 our only wish was to make sure the leaders act fast but as we heard that Rishi Sunak was not going we were very disappointed.

Luckily, he decided he would go after all. So, we decided to write to him to make sure that this time there was more action!  We heard about some people running in a relay race from Glasgow (where COP26 took place) to Sharm El Sheikh (where COP27 was going to be).  So we decided to do our own relay race around the playground.  

We all wrote letters to Rishi Sunak and rolled them up to be batons.  We passed them on from class to class until Year 4 was carrying all the school’s letters.  They then ran into the hall to give the letters to Fabian Hamilton to pass on to the Prime Minister.   

In our letters we told Rishi Sunak what we think the world leaders should do – we need them to take action.  But we also know that it needs to be everybody together that can make a change – including us!  So we all wrote climate promises and made runners who are running with our promises across the world map in the hall. Even the parents and teachers made promises.

We even found our way into the news!  Two reporters from ITV came with a humungous TV camera and recorded us talking about COP27.  They interviewed us and filmed us doing the relay race.  If you want to look at us on Calendar, then click (LINK coming soon!).

Could we become a Zero carbon school…?

by Lucy Sheen, Nifemi Adeoye, Cerys Farquhar Summer 2023

Year 5 have been doing a zero carbon school challenge. Each lesson they are taking a new step to make St. Matthews a carbon free school. Last term they looked at countries that are suffering the most from climate change, also they made posters to inform the rest of the school about the climate crisis.  This term, Year 5 calculated the school’s carbon footprint. We calculated travel, food, purchasing and energy use in school and found that our total carbon footprint for the year is ... 338 Tonnes of CO2!!!  For details see the document below.

Year 5 have worked in groups to come up with ideas and solutions that can help to make the school closer to zero carbon next year.  One group has looked at how we can cut down on electricity usage.  Another group has had the idea of a switch off day.  Another group wants to organise a swap shop to cut down on the need to buy new things. 

Would you like to be a class Eco Warrior next year?!

In our school we have Eco Warriors who help all classes to be more environmentally friendly. To be an Eco Warrior they had to write a speech. Then they got voted by the class. We have two Eco Warriors in each class. Some of the people in the Global Gang are also Eco Warriors. Here are some of the actions that the Eco Warriors are taking:-

• Introducing Young Climate Warriors weekly challenge to their class 
• Checking what we can reduce, reuse or recycle in our classrooms
• Making sure that we turn off our lights and appliances to save energy

​​​​​​​Parisa Zaidi

Finger-licking food: Our school growing project

By Cerys & Nifemi

We, Global Gang, organised a school project where parents and organisations have helped to support it by giving us help and wood for building our vegetable  beds. 

Since then, we have grown potatoes, lettuces, peas, garlic, strawberries and lots of other things. We also have an apple tree growing by the beds. Global Gang dug up the potatoes, Year 3 picked the apples.

Palm oil: Did you know?

Palm  oil is  an edible vegetable oil which is derived  from the  mesocarb fruit of the palm tree. Did you know that when we plant palm plantations to extract palm oil, we are often cutting down  other trees from the rainforest? The palm oil industry has been destroying the world's forests, wildlife and climate. Palm oil is mostly grown in Indonesia and Malaysia, two tropical countries with large areas of rainforest home to tigers, orangutans and other species that are found nowhere else on earth. The scientific name for palm oil is Elaeis Quinensis. Two types of oil can be produced by squeezing the fleshy fruit, and palm kernel oil which comes from crushing the kernel, or the stone in the middle of the fruit. Oil palm trees are native to Africa but were brought to South-East Asia just over 100 years ago as an ornamental tree crop. Now, Indonesia and Malaysia make up over 85% of global supply but there are 42 other countries that also produce palm oil.

What products is Palm Oil in?

Palm oil is in nearly everything – it’s in close to 50% of the packaged products we find in supermarkets, everything from pizza, doughnuts and chocolate, to deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste and lipstick. It’s also used in animal feed and as a biofuel in many parts of the world (not in the UK though!). 

Animals like this Orangutan live in the Amazon rainforest .

Using palm oil means that they lose their  home.  This is tragic.

Watch out there are frauds

People have learnt about the situation. So companies got worried . They started calling palm oil different things . We think this is fraud! Can you find any fraud items in your house ? Here is a link that shows you 200 names for palm oil.

https://www.youngclimatewarriors.org/youngclimatewarriorweeklychallenges 

Palm oil is actually very efficient compared to many other vegetable oils, so the answer isn’t to stop buying products with palm oil.  It’s to look out for sustainably grown palm oil.  If you see this logo, you know that the palm oil in your product hasn’t led to habitat loss for species like the orangutan.

by Parisa Zaidi and Eva-Tate Onuorah

PS The information in the Palm Oil article has come from the Young Climate Warriors website.  www.youngclimatewarriors.org.uk There is a new challenge on there each week to do something different to help the climate or find out more about nature.  We would love it if you could support your child by signing up on the website for the Weekly Challenge and doing it at home - then they can tell their classmates what they have done on a Friday afternoon at school.

Eco-schools Green Flag Award

St. Matthew's already has the Bronze and Silver Eco-schools awards but Global Gang thinks we could go for the Green Flag Award.  What do you think?  If we go for it, we are going to need everyone's help.

Click here to find out more. 

http://eco-schools.org.uk/