BUSY mother-of-two Joanna Saady is launching an eco-registry for Sussex primary schools to help teachers and children make their classrooms greener.
Joanna, founder partner of leading Sussex-based green architecture firm Ecotecture Ltd, has so far approached more than 80 schools to join the scheme.
Her Sussex Eco School Registry will enable participating schools to swap news and information to pursue projects that teach children how to conserve resources and protect their environments and the planet.
Joanna said: “It’s vital, as children are our future and our planet’s future, for them to join together and increase their environmental awareness.
“I want the young people of Sussex to learn from each other about the valuable work being done in some schools in a bid for a more sustainable future. By sharing information, schools can increase their own environmental awareness and take action to improve the way they do things which affect the planet.”
Joanna was inspired to start the Sussex Eco School Registry after reading a Cambridge University report – Community Surroundings - which revealed the enormous stress seven to 11 year old children in Britain today were under with anxieties about school testing through to worries about the world they were growing up in with its threats of global warming and terrorism.
The Cambridge study, based on 700 interviews with youngsters, teachers and parents, echoed a report from Unicef, which put Britain at the bottom of a league table when it came to children’s well-being in developed countries.
As a highly qualified and experienced ‘green’ architect, Joanna is well placed to help schools become greener for the benefit of this and future generations. Bolney-based Ecotecture Ltd, which she runs with business partner Jake White, specialises in building with minimal harm to the environment. Their many projects across the South-East have included the incorporation of wind generators, rainwater recycling and ground heat storage in domestic and public buildings and the use of sustainable products for everyday building needs.
Joanna said: “The harm human existence is causing to our environment should be everyone’s concern from the very youngest to each of us who can alter the way we live to cause less long-term damage.”
Joanna, who has two children of her own in primary school, is passionate about the need to convert children and adults to green living. She is the founder of the Mid Sussex EcoFair, which was held for the first time in Burgess Hill this summer. In 2008 the fair is moving to Horsham with a bigger budget and substantial mainstream support from Horsham District Council, among others.
As part of the 2008 EcoFair Joanna is inviting local schools to create an A1 poster describing how they are ecologically aware.
Joanna said: “We want the children to tell the stories behind their school’s own Eco campaign and this applies to registered Eco-Schools and non-registered alike.”
