Campaigns 
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What do our campaigning students do?

This is a vital component of  the sustainability agenda because it allows students to consider rights and wrongs of specific issues. They can debate amongst themselves, with their families or in the wider global community, having their say on a great variety of subjects. Campaigning students often have a vision for a better world and many of the campaigns we have supported over the past few years concern global issues.

Over the past year students have supported a variety of campaigns. Occasionally they have attended rallies and meetings, sometimes they have emailed MPS and public figures, they have frequently signed petitions, and sometimes have campaigned in their tutor groups. Sometimes a campaign is brought to the whole school's attention and a big campaign can mean that students are involved in assemblies, making presentations for tutor groups or in giving bigger presentations to the wider community. 

Often though, students work quietly behind the scenes on campaigns that range from environmental action to human rights issues.

Our students have been involved in campaigning for every one of these issues in 2010.

  • The price of bananas in supermarkets, with the producer unable to gain a living wage
  • The Wave (prior to Copenhagen)
  • Make Poverty History
  • Fairtrade cotton (equal in importance to Fairtrade food)
  • Send my friend to school
  • Palm oil and orang utans
  • One Goal (during the World Cup)
  • Plastics in the oceans
  • 1010 Campaign
  • Deforestation (petitions)
  • Free Aung San Suu Kyi
  • Global biodiversity (petitions in the Year of Biodiversity)
  • Climate, Copenhagen 10:10, Quizzing the Minister
  • Green Investment ank
  • Dairying (campaign against factory farming)
  • Stop their extinction (WWF)
  • Bring Back Bees Campaign (Daily Telegraph)
  • Dumping toxic waste in the Amazon (Chevron)
  • Whaling (current)
  • PEP TALK (ongoing)
  • The Big Climate Connection, a current WWF campaign. Click here
  • Stop illegal logging in Madagascar.  Madagascar’s Eastern Moist Forest (Ala Atsinanana) hosts an incredible number of endemic (unique) species. Up to 90% of all species exist nowhere else on earth! The timber is valuable and is being illegally removed, destroying habitats. This campaign is CURRENT. Click here.

If you are concerned about issues such as these, you should contact Mrs Hickman to get involved. Campaigners have to be good communictors as much campaigning takes place by email, but frequently small groups of students get together over certain issues.

 

Palm oil has been a big issue on the sustainability agenda for many years now and Ringwood students have taken part in the debate. Despite the best efforts of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, and genuine improvements in responsible sourcing by several major brands, there are still serious issues with deforestation and threats to biodiversity. In April 2010 palm oil was the subject of a high profile campaign. When Greenpeace put its weight behind tackling Nestlé's palm oil sourcing practices and used Nestlé's Fairtrade and flagship brand Kit Kat as the target, it had more impact than any previous action.

The map below shows the spread of the message in 24 hours - the power of social media.