TASIS Autumn Update

TASIS Wildlife Club met for the first time last week for the new school year. The students are all eager to work on a variety of projects. We began discussing our plans. These include working in our garden to maintain our wildlife pond, beginning new projects in the garden, working on our Design For Change project to reduce waste in our dining room, and learning about British wildlife, as well as endangered animals worldwide. We also plan to work on sustainability projects to make our school and our students more environmentally friendly and supportive!To begin, we went out to our garden, which is a large old manor house garden. We visited our wildlife pond that we built three years ago, and we were amazed at how overgrown it got over the summer. The children got straight to work to clear out the overgrown brambles, nettles, and various other types of plants that were blocking the well-being of our pond! After about forty-five minutes, our pond was looking more friendly for the animals that use it! We do keep an area wild next to the pond for our hedgehog, but it was out of control. While in the garden, we also did some apple clean-up, as there were fallen apples everywhere!We also set up a meeting with our headmaster to determine where we are able to set up a new compost site on campus to collect the vegetable and fruit waste from lunches at school. As well, we are setting up a campaign to make students aware of how much they do waste, and alternatives to doing so! It seems that people just do not realise how much food they take that they end up not eating. Our club members have discussed that less waste could save our school spending unnecessary money on food that is not used. As we cannot send the unwanted food to people who need it, perhaps we can ask to send a donation each year to a charity that helps people who do not have enough to eat. We will look into this.We look forward to learning, and most importantly, teaching others. We live in a beautiful world, and we all have the power to make it a nicer place for all life!--