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Ellie the Elephant helps the Academy win a Future Friendly National Award

Spires Academy was recently awarded £500.00 by a national environmental project called ‘Future Friendly’ to help run their recycling and environment project. ‘Future Friendly’ has been set up by several leading household brands - Ariel, Lenor, Fairy and Flash and leading sustainability experts in saving water, energy and waste, the Energy Saving Trust, Global Cool, Waterwise and Waste Watch, in order to support various environmental projects.

The student council were actively involved in applying for the grant for their project – which was to build an elephant out of empty drinks cans – to encourage the students at school to re-cycle and bring to their attention the plight of endangered species such as the elephant.

The grant of £500 was requested so that the Academy could buy materials such as glue and soldering irons to help with the making of the elephant. The members of the school council put up notices around the school and publicised the project and cans soon began to arrive. The elephant was soon christened ‘Ellie the Elephant goes Environmental’ and back in December the Academy learnt that the project had been short listed for a national award!

The Future Friendly Awards ceremony took place on the evening of 6th March at the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall. The evening was hosted by Sir Trevor MacDonald and Tamsin Outhwaite (from Eastenders). There were six awards to be announced and all the short listed project organizers waited nervously for the results. Our project – ‘Ellie the Elephant goes Environmental’ was to be judged within ‘The Youth Creativity Award.’ 

At last our turn came and Spires Academy were announced the winners! Clive, our Community Youth Tutor who helped to mastermind the scheme, was called on stage to be presented with a trophy and told that the Academy would also be receiving a monetary prize of £5000.00!

The building of the elephant statue continues to grow and as a result of the publicity in the national press, we have been approached by the Anthony Wilson, the Artist in Residence at London Zoo, who would like to include the finished statue in an exhibition at the zoo at the end of May.

We hope the project continues to inspire everyone at the Academy and at home to do their bit for the environment and congratulations to everyone involved!