Sign up for the 2010 Appetite for Action Challenge

The Appetite for Action Challenge 2010 will be running from Sept 2010 to June 2011 and we welcome all primary schools from across the UK and Republic of Ireland to take part.
 
It’s free, fun and food-focused, helping schools to tackle a range of sustainability issues through a series of online steps. It’s easy to get started

1) Register for access to the Appetite for Action site
By registering, you’ll gain access to free lesson plans, activities, a series of short films created for use in the classroom and fact sheets.

2) Recruit an Action Team and choose your challenge topic
Once registered for the site, you’ll also gain access to the Challenge, a step-by-step process that helps your school to translate ideas into action.

Your Action Team will guide your school through your chosen challenge and can be a mix of staff, pupils and even parents.  The maximum number of team members that can be recorded on your profile page is 35 but your Action Team should reach out to the whole school community to increase your impact.

Your challenge topic choice is completely up to you.  Perhaps you would like to recruit your Action Team and Lead Teacher first, and then ask them to choose or you might prefer to have a whole school vote.   Remember, the more involved people are from the start, the more successful your challenge is likely to be.

Once registered to the site, you’ll find lots more about each challenge but here’s a little insight into what’s involved:

The Greener Grub Challenge
Investigate where your school food comes from
Survey pack lunches and interview canteen staff
Reduce food related waste
Increase local, seasonal and organic food

The Reduce Rubbish Challenge
Sort through and assess your school’s rubbish
Interview your school caretaker
Set and achieve targets for improvement
Encourage your whole school to reduce, re-use, recycle and compost

The Get Growing Challenge
Explore the growing potential of your school
Encourage green fingers
New growing areas in your school
Eat your yummy homegrown food

3) Lastly, follow the Challenge Steps to help turn your school food green.

Step 1 Measure
The Action Team carry out their first measurement according to their chosen challenge topic. All survey sheets and questionnaires are available online and the team will be able to input their data onto their profile page. We are looking for improvement in three key measures.

Step 2 Action Planning
The Action Team produces an action plan based on the results from Step 1.  To enter the Sky Competition and gain the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) certificates you need to complete at least five actions.

Step 3 Take Action
Get the whole school community involved from the early years classes through to parents, implementing changes that make a big difference to the environmental impact of your school food. Tell us about what you do through online diary entries and create at least five to gain your UNEP certificate.

Step 4 Measure your success and celebrate your achievements
The Action Team runs a second measurement to find out how much your school has improved.  Celebrate your success with the following: 

Earning United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) certificates

Action Team members who successfully complete an Appetite for Action challenge receive a unique United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) certificate that celebrates their achievements in environmental  performance. See our UNEP page for more details on what steps must be taken.

 School of the Week

We are always on the look out for Action Teams whose efforts stand out and once a week we honour them by naming them School of the Week!

• Every week during the programme we will select a top school our School of the Week. They will feature on the front page of the website with a link to their profile page so everyone can read about their activities and receive an exciting prize. See our supporters page to find out more what prizes will be featured each month

More about the Challenge

The Challenge… 

• Recognises environmental achievement- all participating students will receive a UN Environment Programme certificate

 Programme certificate

• Can help you to gain or upgrade your EcoSchools or Green Schools status

Sharing your challenge progress

• You will have a password and username, which you can share if you wish to
• You can use your own Action Club URL to show parents and other community members your profile page so they can see what you are doing

Security

• You can set your privacy settings and change these at any time
• Team members can select fruit people avatars if they do not wish to put images online

Existing Appetite for Action School?

If you have already completed one challenge, we encourage you to come back and pick a new one. Just select to start a new challenge from your Action Club page and you’ll be able to choose whether to start a brand new topic, or if you didn’t get to finish your chosen topic last year you could start it again. Aim for bigger teams, bolder actions and better results!