Children from Forest Primary School in Guernsey have participated in a speech writing competition.
In February 2020, Butterfield launched the Junior Ocean Advocate project in collaboration with the Plastic Free communities of Guernsey, Jersey and Alderney. Every primary school across the islands received a Junior Ocean Advocate pack with resources including books and Darla the Dolphin. The project aimed to help schools teach children about marine pollution and encourage them to protect their local marine environments.
Inspired by Butterfield’s campaign, Forest Primary School seized the opportunity to put persuasive writing skills and theory into practice, by holding a speech writing competition for its year five and six pupils. The brief was to encourage islanders to reduce single-use plastic use with the goal of achieving positive change for the environment.
From the 56 pupils that took part in the competition, eight finalists were selected by the teachers to perform their speech on stage to a panel of judges. Butterfield Marketing and Communications Manager Claire Heaume was the competition’s guest judge and presented the winners with their very own Junior Ocean Advocate Packs.
Ruby Coyde and Ramsay Ismail were the year five and six winners, respectively. Finalists, Belle Jones, Lauren Vickery, Zach Maiden, Amie Miller, Max Patterson and Philip Du Plessis were all highly commended for their speeches and made the judges’ decision a very difficult one.
Ms. Heaume said: “I was amazed by all the work on show today and how well informed the children were on the impact of single use plastic. All the finalists were fantastic, which made our decision even tougher. They were very engaging to watch on stage and certainly made me think about where I can make changes to reduce my use of plastic.
“As Butterfield operates primarily from island jurisdictions, protecting the marine environment is very important to us, so it is wonderful to see that Darla is helping to start the conversation about environmental issues in schools”.
Amy Watt, Key Stage 2 Department Leader at Forest Primary School said: “We are really pleased with how the children engaged with the competition and so proud of them. We are very grateful to Butterfield for coming to judge the competition and providing the prizes. It gave the children that extra sense of occasion and significance”.
