Last year we were invited to join the ‘Green Schools Partnership’. This is a school twinning programme developed between the Oxford Diocese and the C.S.I – Churches of South India. Only 10 schools from each country have been selected for the programme which aims to draw together schools from across the world to work on climate change and environmental protection issues.
The C.S.I was the first group of churches to take up ecological concerns, creating ‘green churches’ and then moving towards ‘green schools’. The intention of this new project is for the children across the schools to learn from each other about ways we can tackle global environmental issues and to build connections between those in the partnership.
We were honoured to be chosen by the Diocese to be one of the ten special schools (there are nearly 300 primary schools in the Diocese) to join this group. On Tuesday 19th January 2021, all those involved in the project met virtually to agree to a covenant of action and commitment to the project. There were exciting discussions about the possibility of growing ‘seeds of friendship’ across the world and the hope that the children involved will lead the way as the ‘eco-warriors set to inherit the world’.
I hope you will agree that this is an exciting project to be part of. The idea is that it will run for two years and will involve the exchange of information between each pair of schools. With our strong commitment to eco-concerns, it will be wonderful for us to share our work in another dimension and learn from others who are driving for the same change in a very different environment. The school we have been paired with is called the CSI English Medium Aided Primary School and is situated in Eluru, in South India. It has 75 pupils.
I look forward to updating you regularly about the project as it unrolls over the next few months.