Eco Mini Vinnie

The Eco Mini Vinnie Team

What do Mini Vinnies do?

1) Mini Vinnies puts the word of God into action.

2) Mini Vinnies use prayer as worship in all meetings and all that they do.

3) Mini Vinnies bear witness to the word of God by seeking and finding those in need.

4) Mini Vinnies is about welcoming those who are forgotten.

5) Mini Vinnies put the welfare of others as their priority.

Job Description

• To be a good role model showing excellent behaviour around school and when representing the school at outside events.
• To promote our Catholic ethos by living our school Mission-

‘Loving, Serving and Growing Together with Jesus’ and the values of St Bernadette’s.

• To promote the importance of looking after our school environment, the local environment and the wider world environment by being part of and leading Eco projects.
• To help support in the development and maintenance of the school Prayer Garden.
• To help and support in the development and maintenance of our Forest area and the school grounds.

The whole school is committed to caring for God's beautiful world. We learnt Benjamin Zephaniah's Poem Future Visions which helped us to understand our responsibilities for caring for our amazing planet. You can watch us perform the poem here: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NVgDUtBUuNwmM2TfVFyKUh_fhDEmmNzk/view?usp=sharing 

We also learnt the beautiful song Laudato Si - watch the video and join us singing these amazing lyrics here

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iyrIaSIkRF1n9fNO8IrDLTbRsryK8ZI5/view?usp=sharing

The Eco Mini Vinnie Team is made up of a range of pupils from Years Four to Six who are passionate about the environment and God’s creation. The main purpose of this team is to help to promote the importance of looking after our school environment, the local environment and the wider world environment by being part of and leading Eco projects. 

‘Loving, Caring and looking after God’s World’

They also help to support in the development and maintenance of the school Prayer Garden, our school Forest Environmental Area and the school grounds, always keeping in mind the wonder of God’s amazing creation and how we should enjoy and respect it.

They help to run a ‘Switch Off Fortnight’ campaign where we encouraged the whole school community to save energy and ‘Switch it Off’ which has proved very successful. 

As a result of the work of the Eco Mini Vinnies Team, we are the only school and one of only 10 public buildings in Milton Keynes with a Category B Energy Efficiency Rating!

We are currently growing vegetables in our school allotment area and take part in anti-litter campaigns and community litter picks.

Our Eco Mini Vinnies were instrumental in helping us to gain the Green Flag with distinction! Thank you team!

CAFOD - 'Eyes of the World' Campaign

As a whole school eco-initiative, we have learnt about a variety of climate change issues in each year group to engage children in being proactive little citizens for the future of our planet.  Each child then produced an individual ‘eye’ as a creative art lesson, to symbolise that we are watching what is being done to resolve climate change issues, with a goal towards healing the world’s environmental problems.

All of the individual children’s eyes were made with different media, so we have an assortment of ‘stained glass effect’ to 3D origami versions amongst other colourful contributions. The eyes were then gathered together to create some displays in school. We now have an enormous eye. as a collaborative art work on display in our small hall behind the Chapel and also a fabulous pair of collaborative eyes on the glass window looking out towards people in the local community, to raise awareness and promote the CAFOD Campaign ‘Eyes of the World’ which links to the aims of the COP26 in the UK this year.

We are very proud of the children’s effort with this eco campaign and how they are fostering such a love and respect for God’s Creation, our common home and an appreciation of how it needs care and protection.

The Eco Mini Vinnie team presented a special assembly to the whole school community.

The pupil-led assembly was focused upon a CAFOD Campaign called ‘Eyes of the World’ which is to raise awareness of climate change and how it has the greatest impact upon the most vulnerable people around our world and how we can all help as individuals to reduce the damage being done.

They showed us lots of information about Fatima and Florence and how climate change affects their lives and the communities they live within and how they face struggles.

We learnt about COP26 and how the leaders are having important talks about how each nation can help with the climate crisis. 

In Year 3, we have been learning about recycling with a focus on Christmas packaging waste. The children learnt about the 'scrunch test' to determine if wrapping paper can be recycled or not after opening gifts and disposing of waste responsibly. We also explored how glitter is made from tiny particles of plastic and could potentially end up in the ocean, adding to the problem of pollution too. We looked at making good purchasing choices with gift bags that display an FSC logo to show they are made from sustainably sourced materials as recognised by the Forest Stewardship Council.