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Binah, a Senior Manager for our schools programmes, talks to Georgina Webber, Deputy Head from Greenside School. Greenside won the Sustainable City Awards School of the Year award in 2022. Binah and Georgina talk about the importance of the award to the school, and the sustainability benefits of integrating a school within a community.

Find out more about the Sustainable City Awards, enter your school, or nominate a changemaker here.

"We Share Freely". The change we want to see in the world is bigger than we are. So, we're sharing our knowledge, resources and ideas to help more people and organisations take steps forward towards our vision of a green and thriving planet, where everyone can enjoy happy and healthy lives within the Earth's limits.

 

As part of this, we've launched our "5 Minute GAP" series, a collection of five minute conversations that will share how we work and what we're working on. We'll talk about what we're trying to achieve and why, how we function as an organisation, and the thinking behind our plans and strategy.

 

We'll be regularly sharing these conversations, which will feature different members of our team and trustee board, as well as external experts.

 

We hope you enjoy listening in to our chats, getting to know our team and finding out what makes us who we are. 

 

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If you prefer to read rather than watch, the transcription is here:

Georgina: We've been doing a lot of things around sustainability and around environmental action, mainly through our kitchen, because we have our own kitchen here, as you know, and our own vegetable garden and soil projects. So a lot of the work we've been doing, we’ve been working on for a period of time that led up to this award and it felt like the award was kind of the validation for everything that we've been doing. I think we were just so busy doing it here. It was actually nice to take a moment to reflect on the fact that other people had noticed and that actually what we were doing is a really great thing.

So it was nice to be able to have that icing on the cake, really. Since getting the award, it's really encouraged us to continue. To really drive doing what we're doing because we know it's right. So, I mean, obviously the prize money was great, but for us it was really about the validation, the sort of the stamp on saying that what we're doing is a really, really powerful tool for learning for all schools and all children, no matter where you are located, whatever your context, that this kind of approach to learning is really powerful. It’s made us even more determined to keep going with it.

Binah: I guess, like you're saying, it's a time for you to reflect as the school about everything you're achieving, but also to show other schools and other educators, young people, parents, school communities as a whole that this is possible. And this is a really great way of doing stuff. 

Georgina: I was reading actually around, yeah, the connection that you had to like elderly residential homes and delivering the bread with like a bike and all of that and I'm wondering about, like obviously it's a fantastic, fantastic work that you're doing with the school, but what does it mean to be more connected or do you feel more connected to your communities through this work? Like, yeah, I just think that's a really fantastic element of this project and the work you're doing. 

Yeah, well absolutely. I think because we kind of have a... we had a responsibility. We see it as a responsibility to community, as a concept. And the more that we can draw the different strands of the community in together through us, through our door, and then us to go out through that door to reach these different communities has been... is a really important thing to do. So the old folks home, going to visit the old people there. Yeah we packed the bread up into the bike and the buns and we cycle it round the corner and share it with them. And we used to do something with them before COVID. But then when COVID happened, it meant that all that connection stopped. So this way, going back in with our bread and buns has been really, really great and everybody gets a lot out of that. 

And then we also started a community food share every week. So now that we've got more space to store things we can make and provide more things. So the community food share is a way of us redistributing what would otherwise be going to waste. So it's not a foodbank in the traditional sense of a foodbank in that it doesn't carry the stigma with it. This is an open to everybody event. So we take surplus food from our vegetable suppliers, from our delivery companies, also from the Felix Project, and we take our... any surplus that we have and we ask our families if they have anything that’s surplus. So rather than throw it away, bring it into school. And then on the Friday afternoon we lay everything out on tables in the playground and everyone comes and helps themselves so that we are putting food, taking food from the community and giving it back to the community, redistributing it. And that way nothing goes to waste and everybody is helped. 

And I think it's really, really, really important to remove the stigma around that because at the moment, especially, who are we to say who doesn't need who does and who doesn't need help? So by making it a sort of a universal offer that you can come and line up and you can get our bread, which is pay what you can afford, so we just take a donation for the bread, but everything else is help yourself. And when it's gone, it's gone. So that...it's a great atmosphere in the playground every Friday because everybody wants to come and see what there is and everyone's helping each other out. And it's created a real community buzz that people look forward to it. People want to be part of it. People bring things in for it. So it's a kind of don't miss out event, every Friday. 

Binah: That sounds so fantastic. And yeah, like you say, it's like a collective centre of people where you're removing stigma and it's about people coming together rather than about who needs what at what time. Everyone needs community and everyone wants to be part of a community. And that's what you’ve created at Greenside which is, yeah, it sounds just fantastic. 

Georgina: And you never know who may need a celeriac or an aubergine. 

Binah: Exactly. Yeah. I'm wondering as well, we do quite a lot of work with schools who feel a bit potentially nervous to make their... to take a first step or unsure of the best way to sort of work towards how, how you're sort of doing things at Greenside. What was the sort of first step that you took as a school and what would you say to other schools who are potentially a bit nervous or they'd never sort of stepped into that space before? And how could they go about doing something similar? 

Georgina: Well, the main driver for us was changing our school food provision. That's kind of, looking back, that's the starting point from where we developed everything else. I think when we decided to take ownership over that, it allowed us to have the freedom to make the kitchen a learning space just as much as the rest of the school. 

So then the kitchen and everyone who works in the kitchen are a part of the team. So that the school can use the kitchen and the kitchen can use the school, and then through that you can extend it out to the community. So everybody's connected by food. Everyone needs to eat. Everyone wants to eat. And food is a really great driver for enthusiasm and positivity and also inclusion and involvement because it is something that connects all of us. So when we made that change, then everything else was able to come from it. But I do appreciate that that is quite a big thing to do. That is a massive undertaking for people to do. 

But I think in terms of other initiatives, I just think people need to not be afraid to have a go and reach out more. They don't have to rip off the Band-Aid and go for everything in one go. Things can be done in waves. And from when you start one thing that's right for your community and your context, then the rest tends to follow. 

Binah: Yeah, definitely. And I guess what you're saying is, yeah, you've made that one change, then things have naturally just happened from that. 

Georgina: Yeah. Because when you start to ask people, mention things to people about an idea, then very quickly that idea begins to grow because you find people who are interested or people who could say, Oh, I know I've got a garden or I've got an allotment, or my grandma used to do that, or there's, there's, there's always a way in once the conversation starts, it just takes one idea. And then I think people need to not be afraid of asking for help as well, because there's a lot of volunteer help out there that people don't necessarily think that is there.