Our students in Primaries Five, Six and Seven were delighted to travel to South West College (SWC), Enniskillen in recent weeks, in order to participate in a Biodiversity and Pollinators’ Workshop. This wonderful opportunity was made possible for our students through the kindness and facilitation of SWC and, most especially, its Sustainability Departmental Officer - Ms Supriya Foster - to whom we convey our utmost thanks and appreciation.
Allied to our young people’s participation in the College’s ‘Sustainability’-themed art competition at this time, the Workshop enabled our students to continue to explore the need for sustainability in our precious world, in addition to engaging in a range of activities and learning which focused on biodiversity and the vital role that bees and all pollinators play in the whole web of life, food production and biodiversity.
Through the delivery of a most thought-provoking, insightful, varied and enjoyable range of learning activities, games and presentations, Supriya ensured that our young people travelled back to our school, homes and community with a greater understanding and awareness about encouraging a better way of managing our whole landscape, to permanently support our struggling biodiversity. We learned how, by working together with our farming community, we can achieve an increased awareness of pollinators and the conditions and environment they need, in order to survive on farmland. In relation to our own homes and gardens, school grounds and local communities, we pledged to better co-exist with biodiversity and help return food and shelter for pollinators to our landscape, thereby helping to create networks of biodiversity-friendly habitat across our landscape.
Of great concern to many of our students, too, was the realisation that much of our Irish wild bee species are threatened with extinction. This is mainly because we have drastically reduced the amount of food and safe nesting sites that support them. Supriya very much encouraged us that, together, we can all take steps to help restore pollinator populations to necessary and healthy levels; simple ways, whereby everyone can help. We know that many pollinators, especially bees, are in trouble. We need bees in order to grow our fruit and vegetables and to make sure that our countryside has lots of beautiful wildflowers. Thus, we promise to play our part in transforming our landscape for pollinators, managing our school grounds and our individual homes and gardens, to support biodiversity.
We convey a most sincere word of thanks to Supriya. We also thank our school staff for accompanying our students to SWC. Finally, we pay tribute to a number of our Primary Seven students - Conor, Odhrán, Darragh, Oisín and Tilly - for your hard work and creativity in compiling the video of our visit, as located below. We very much hope you will enjoy and gain from sharing in our video and photographs…
