Funded by the DfE, Climate Ambassadors match volunteer climate experts with education settings.
Part of Let’s Go Zero, Climate Action Advisors are independent experts who offer free support for schools, colleges, and nurseries across England.
About
Consult with your staff, learners, parents, governors or trustees, and local community members to understand their climate priorities and what climate action could look like for your setting.
Find out what sustainability activities or local initiatives people are involved in, and capture any opportunities or skills and expertise your community can contribute.
This can also help you understand your community’s current knowledge and confidence around sustainability, identify enthusiasm and potential barriers to change, and gather a clearer picture of where your setting is starting from.
You could ask informally through existing meetings, events and conversations; or run a survey or consultation.
Collate these ideas and use the feedback to identify common priorities and focus areas for your climate action plan. Over time, you can develop these ideas into a shared sustainability vision.
Why
Listening to your community early on helps build buy-in for your climate action plan and wider sustainability work.
It uncovers hidden skills across your community, identifies enthusiastic volunteers, and builds external partnerships. When people have a voice in shaping goals, they are far more likely to support delivering them.
How
Your sustainability lead can coordinate activities, with support from senior leaders. Tailor your approaches for different groups and make sure people understand how their ideas will be used. Involving learners in collating the ideas is always a good idea.
- Early Years and Primary: Use simple, informal and accessible approaches that fit naturally into existing relationships with children and families
- Secondary and Further education: Give learners meaningful opportunities to contribute to decisions and priorities. Student councils, sustainability groups, enrichment programmes or curriculum activities can help gather a wider range of views and identify learners with relevant interests or expertise
- MATs and groups: Central sustainability or estates teams can provide a shared approach and resources to collate ideas. A shared survey or set of questions can help identify common priorities, but individual settings should have flexibility to reflect their own communities, circumstances and local opportunities
Resources
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