By Dan Barron, Community Organiser
Coleridge Primary School contacting me in May to discuss organising a litter pick for the school pupils. Ian Tankard the head teacher of the school has seen community activities in the area that he lives and has been inspired. Ian wants to teach primary pupils about respecting the community and the positive impacts they can have on it.
After our first official meet, I contacted partners to get involved on the day and I had begun working on the Coleridge Community Hero programme.
The litter pick took place on the 25th June. Wayne from the Love where you live programme has been able to provide equipment to the school for the Litter pick. The kids were able to have dinosaur themed pickers and some hi-vis vests. Ian also attended with 2 Coleridge teachers who had organised the 25 pupils into 3 groups. Wayne, Sam and I joined a group each to help support pupils with the pick and to be safe whilst out on the activity. Both Ruksana Haleem and Wendy Cooksey both attended the activity speaking with pupils and teachers. Although the weather was not the best a little drizzle of rain never hurt anyone. The pupils were enthusiastic and had identified lots of litter around the school grounds despite the weather. The biggest find being an abandoned pair of shoes and they had managed to locate an area on that was heavily littered but could not be accessed. As a result Wayne Munroe Smith has enquired about the area to see if it can be cleaned.
After the litter pick had finished the pupils had all really enjoyed it. They were able to see the 9 bags of litter they had picked up from the streets. Ian wants to now host another litter pick with more pupils at the school before the end of the school year. We are currently organising that with the school and partners again. Overall the trial with the school has been a massive success and a good starting point for the Coleridge Community Hero programme.
Pupils are wanting to litter pick their own streets. Ian wants to do more picks in future. Wayne is on board to support the school for every litter pick and local councillors have engaged with a school they had not previously engaged with.
Ian had said “Thanks for last Friday, I thought it was a huge success.”
In the near future we will continue to meet to finalise the community programme to create a sustainable community activity programme for the school.
