Ennistymon pupils shortlisted for UNESCO award

A GROUP of Clare pupils, who recently returned from a prolonged science trip to Italy, have been shortlisted for a major award for their work comparing a river close to Venice with the Inagh River in the north of the county, it was revealed on Tuesday.

The group from Ennistymon Vocational School travelled to Bassano, near Venice on Thursday, April 8 for what was meant to be a 10-day trip comparing the Brenta River with the Inagh River but ended up staying until Saturday last.
“The students arrived back into The Square in Ennistymon on Saturday afternoon at around 6.30pm. It was an emotional reunion as a lot of them had never spent any time away from their parents and were suddenly away for two and a half weeks. It was a big deal for them,” recalled Ennistymon Vocational School principal, Mary Joyce.
Granted Monday off to accommodate exhaustion, the pupils returned to school on Tuesday and were greeted with a visit by Elaine Nevin, national director of ECO UNESCO, officially notifying them that they were shortlisted.
ECO UNESCO recognised the transition-year group for their environmental action project, A Tale of Two Rivers, which is now vying for the top prizes in the Senior Biodiversity Category in ECO UNESCO’s Young Environmentalist Awards 2010.
“Because the students were stranded in Italy as a result of the flying restrictions they went to school there. This meant they did a lot of extra work on the river there. They studied the water quality and did drawings of the river and the views from the town,” Mary Joyce explained.
“The extended stay meant they had a lot of classroom time where the Irish and Italian students and teachers were working on the comparative study of the river and they had time to sit down and write about it, which is time they wouldn’t have had here because they would have been on tours and too tired to write afterwards,” she joked.
“As part of the project, the group were also working on a DVD of their research. They have an extra week of footage from the studies they did on the Brenta River, including walking from the source and testing the quality and so on,” she added.
“During Elaine’s visit the students were able to tell her all about the projects, the aims and objectives and give her the details of the comparative study. A large part of the ECO UNESCO competition is about raising awareness for the project in the area so the students were able to show her the blog they created about the project. We are hoping also to put some work about the project on display in the local library and the aquarium in Lahinch to show people the importance of the cleanliness of the river.
“The estuary and the river are Special Areas of Conservation but what they want is to encourage the Department of the Environment to declare it a Natural Heritage Area. This would grant the entire river the protection status it is entitled to because it is home to the salmon and the otter, two protected species in Ireland,” Mary concluded.
This is the fifth time the Ennistymon Vocational School has been shortlisted for the awards.
The students, along with a group from Lisdoonvarna Girl Guides, will now display their work at the 2010 Young Environmentalist Awards Showcase on Wednesday, May 12 at Dublin’s Mansion House.
The Lisdoonvarna project is aimed at highlighting issues around consumerism.