Chemistry and the atmosphere – why should I make changes?
Science teacher, Emma Gannon, from Ethos College in Dewsbury was awarded an Outreach Fund grant at the beginning of 2020 to support a project that aimed to engage their students in the fight against climate change.
At the start, their intention was to engage their local public and educate them on climate change matters but due to the pandemic it was quickly realised that this would not be possible. After reaching out to us to look to alter this project considering the pandemic, they produced a video with students from the college as well as leaflets to promote it. By doing this they were able to successfully engage their local community at a safe distance. In addition, they have been able to achieve a wider reach than originally intended by promoting the video online via social media.
Emma Gannon reflected on the project, "Ethos College were delighted to receive funding from the Royal Society of Chemistry to enable them to raise awareness of how individuals in our local area can make a difference to climate change. As part of our GCSE course, we study a topic on the atmosphere, how the actions of humans are altering the composition of the atmosphere and what the potential impact of this is. Students reflections were that they could not make a difference as leaders were the ones responsible for implementing change. We talked about how if everyone made small differences, this could add up to a big impact. We then decided that we wanted to support people in our community to make these small changes; however, the pandemic limited our ability to move around the area so we decided that a leaflet and video, giving details of not only how they can make changes, but how they will individually benefit through lower bills and better health, would be the best method to get our message out. We completed the project with our partners, Engaging Education, who produced both the leaflet and video, so many thanks to them for their support and guidance."
"Our students were really proud of their work and I feel that we have started to influence a new generation of young people who are more aware of the impact that individual actions can have on atmospheric change."
In general the projects we fund are either Schools Engagement or Public Engagement, but Emma’s project was really interesting as it was able to achieve both by involving school students in the creation of the video resource, inspiring them to make a difference, as well as then having the resources to engage the public in the topic of climate change.
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