This week’s organisation spotlight is on Climate Ed, a charity offering education to kids about climate science, carbon literacy and climate action!
Hello, please could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about Climate Ed?
Hello, my name is Ben and I co-founded Climate Ed in 2018! Before that, I worked as a history teacher, and had a background in history and education. I was interested in climate change and I felt more needed to be done about educating people about it. So, I left my job and set up Climate Ed with a friend! We started visiting local schools, giving presentations and workshops about climate change.
Through a long process of trial and error we designed a climate action programme. We then began recruiting volunteers to deliver it. Since then, we’ve been sending out volunteers across London – we’ve worked with over 200 schools, 10,000 students and nearly 250 volunteers! We’re also very excited to be launching in Oxford and Birmingham soon.
Our action program looks at three thematic areas – travel, food and general consumption – clothes, what we buy, for instance. Usually we work with years 5 and 6. We aim to get students carbon literate, give them an understanding of the climate impact so that hopefully they can go away and share that knowledge with their family
Could you tell us a little more about the project? How might a volunteering session go at Climate Ed?
Our program includes five workshops, each running for an hour. These are designed to support
students in their learning, through a range of activities. We might begin with a volunteer, giving a presentation talking through slides.Then students will watch a video, answering a question sheet based on it. Then follows group activities, including drama and role play activities. We designed this to be varied, stimulating and importantly fun. Climate Change can be depressing and alarming, but we try to focus on the solutions for it.
What can volunteers learn by volunteering with Climate Ed?
A huge amount. We do look out for people with expertise in climate change – so the more subject knowledge you have, the better. But because it’s quite a challenging volunteering role, our volunteers learn a lot from this – however much knowledge they have on the subject. We’ve had people with PHds on climate change deliver the program who find it stretches their knowledge! Working with children also challenges people’s teaching skills.
Above all, volunteers find passing on their knowledge to the next generation really rewarding. The kids also really appreciate that people are volunteering out of their own free time. Most of our volunteers are doing this because they care about climate change. Quite a few volunteers are interested in building experience in the sector and this is a great place to do that.
Any funny stories?
Children being children they ask extraordinary questions, so we keep track of the craziest questions they ask. Here are a selection…
“Will the world get taken over by giant insects?”
“If the world gets flooded will we have to evolve to fish to swim?”
“If the world gets hotter will we have to spend all our money on sun cream?”
“Is there one person in the world who controls the climate?”
Thank you so much to Ben from Climate Ed for your time! Interested in teaching the next generation to take a stand against climate change? Become a volunteer for Climate Ed here! Want to find out more? Check out their website, Facebook page, X (formerly twitter) and Instagram.
Not sure where to begin with your volunteering journey? Check out our resources page here.