Last week saw the concluding session of the Resource for Life programme, as our primary schools rounded off a successful school year and packed up for the summer holidays.
Since the idea was born in Autumn 2011, the Resource for Life programme has developed in leaps and bounds, thanks to funding from the Robertson Trust, a donation from Nairns, and funds raised by the Runner Bean Team from the Great Winter Run.
Throughout the first year of the programme, 60 children have benefited from Resource for Life, learning the life skills necessary to help them access the resources they need for their lives from their local environments. The children have learnt how to grow their own food using low cost urban gardening techniques, how to recycle and reuse household materials to create useful items, how to use local water resources efficiently, how to harness local energy, and how to save energy in the home.
To recap and document the activities and achievements of Resource for Life 2012, we teamed up with London based children's arts charity, House of Fairytales, which is working with local schools and community groups to produce a journal which will be distributed in the Edinburgh Art Festival. This was a wonderful opportunity for the Resource for Life classes to showcase their learning, as they reported their food growing and designed advertisements for their DIY natural household cleaning products.
Aside from achieving encouraging learning outcomes, both children and facilitators thoroughly enjoyed participating in Resource for Life. Over the summer, we plan to learn from our experiences gained over the past year and develop Resource for Life, ready to make a comeback in the upcoming academic year, 2012/ 2013. If you're part of, or know a school that would like to discuss working with Resource for Life, please contact us at amy.clarke@irri.org.uk or 0131 202 1649.
For now, happy holidays everyone!
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