Young Environmentalist Awards Showcase and Awards Ceremony

Ireland’s Biggest Celebration of Youth ECO-Action!

Green teens from Scoil Chonglais Baltinglass were crowned the Overall Senior Winners at ECO-UNESCO’s 16^th annual Young Environmentalist Showcase and Awards Ceremony held in the Round Room of the Mansion House today. In attendance were over 650 young people, Professor Patrick McKeever, Chief of Section at the Global Earth Observation Section and Secretary of the International Geoscience Programme, Minister of State at Department of Foreign Affairs, Dublin City Council Councillor Claire Byrne and the youthful master of ceremonies, Aidan Power.

The winning project ‘B&B for birds and bugs’ scooped a total of two prizes at the event including the Senior Biodiversity Award. Their winning ECO-action project focused on offering an accommodationto bugs and birds after some fieldwork and research undertaken in the surrounding of their school. This research highlighted that their populations had dramatically dropped compared to previous students’ surveys. While searching for an answer to what happened to all the bugs and birds, the group realised that the construction of the newly built school extension must have resulted in the destruction of their habitats. This was the drive for the creation of the birds and bugs sanctuaries.

The 2015 Overall Junior Award went to Scoil Mhuire gan Smál, Blarney, in Cork. They won both the Overall Junior, and Junior Biodiversity category with their project, ‘Blarney Bats Babes’. They organised two events: the drama group staged a barefoot dancing performance at the Smock Alley Theatre, while the action project group took part in planning a parade around town for which they prepared banners, T-shirts and flags. The two events took place on the same day and brought together other young people outside the group. The creation of a Facebook page provided a powerful communication tool to give coverage on social media, which also promoted how important bats are to our environment and farms!

These winners were just two of the 81 lucky groups who were selected for the finals from almost 4,000 young people throughout the Republic and Northern Ireland at regional ‘‘Dragons’ Den’’ style ECO-Dens in March.

Preceding the official awards ceremony, the public were invited to a colourful exhibition where the Young Environmentalists showcased their ECO-Action project. The ECO-UNESCO team also provided exciting green-themed activities including creative recycling workshops, an EPA Zone, an EU & Me Zone and sustainability zone, a biodiversity zone and a talent zone where visitors were entertained by quality youth performances from the finalists.

Commenting on ECO-UNESCO’s Young Environmentalist Awards programme Ireland’s largest youth environmental awards and showcase, Elaine Nevin, National Director of ECO-UNESCO commented; “This year’s YEA was a truly inspiring event. The level of dedication, innovation and environmental awareness demonstrated by these young people throughout this year’s Young Environmentalist Awards was phenomenal. I would like to congratulate not only our very deserving winners, but everybody who took part in the programme and who through their environmental action projects made their homes, schools and communities a greener place to live, work and study. We were delighted to have Professor Patrick McKeever of UNESCO this year event along with Minister of State at Irish aid Mr. Sean Sherlock as special guests. The actions of these young people can be replicated anywhere in the world to help protect and conserve our environment and we hope that UNESCO clubs worldwide will strive to do their bit for the environment and follow in the footsteps of their Irish counterparts.”

The annual awards programme run by ECO-UNESCO, Ireland’s environmental education and youth organisation, recognises and rewards young people that carry out local environmental action projects. The programme has provided thousands of young people, aged 10 -18, an opportunity to take action and raise awareness in their own community on issues that matter the most to them.

The following are the 2015 ECO-UNESCO Young Environmentalist Awards winners:

Young Environmentalist Awards 2015 Overall Senior Winners: Young people from Scoil Chonglais for their project “B&B for birds and bugs”

Award presented by: Elaine Nevin (National Director of ECO-UNESCO), Professor Patrick McKeever (UNESCO Paris) and Mark Bennett (Chairperson of ECO-UNESCO)

Young Environmentalist Awards 2015 Overall Junior Winners: Young people from Scoil Mhuire gan Smál for their project “Blarney Bats Babes”

Award presented by: Elaine Nevin (National Director of ECO-UNESCO), Professor Patrick McKeever (UNESCO Paris) and Mark Bennett (Chairperson of ECO-UNESCO)

Young Environmentalist Awards 2015 Junior Energy winners: Young people from Coláiste Naomh Eoin with their project “Fuel Cells – Power for the future”