Environment project is helping children grow
The Lochaber Environmental Group (LEG) team are no strangers to delivering school lessons on renewable energy, active travel and composting throughout Lochaber.
However, last year, we did something slightly different as part of our Go Grow and Glow project, which is funded by the Climate Challenge Fund.
In 2019, Scotland’s first community-owned school opened in Strontian.
Along with the new building, the school also has a new polytunnel, installed by LEG, to help the school to grow as much food as possible, to make local food growing core to the lessons, as well as introducing the pupils to carbon literacy and how we can help address the climate crisis.
It’s been great to see the children so engaged and enjoying the rewards of growing their own food, reconnecting with the environment.
At Lundavra Primary School, the produce LEG helped the pupils plant last summer has already made it onto the lunch menu.
It is important to engage with young people in this way, as the future of our planet depends on changing our approach to the resources of the natural world.
We can no longer take for granted and exploit our shared resources without considering the longer term implications and impact such choices have. Figures show that many parts of Lochaber experience high levels of multiple disadvantage and poverty. Rates of childhood obesity are considerably higher in Lochaber than the Scottish national average.
And as poverty remains the most accurate predictor of avoidable premature death, with Scotland topping the UK’s heath inequality gap, the need for nutritionally superior locally grown food could not be higher.