By Abi Wharton, Head of Global Awareness

Block 5 Global Awareness students have continued to practice the art of social innovation whilst learning remotely, utilising even more their skills in campaigning, particularly through social media and internet resources.

Ava Sender Logan has been motivated by the very current topic of food poverty. Ava said: “This lockdown, we have been working on campaigning in Global Awareness. During this project I was interested in the topic of food poverty. For my project, I self-published a book to Amazon; 30 Bites on a Budget. In this book you will find my illustrations, a QR code to a video I have made about food poverty, a poem I have written and 30 meals to make on a budget. The idea behind this is was linked to the new school meals policy where school lunches are no longer free in the UK. I have made 30 lunch ideas which will feed a family of four. These meals cost between £1-2 per person. The book contains a month’s worth of cheap lunches. All profits from this book go to my local food bank. So far, we have raised £80. Please check my book out here.”

Kam Nelson-Clayton and Fifi Phillips began their research investigating period poverty in the UK, a very real issue at the moment, developing their understanding of sustainable period products and the importance of these being more widely available in schools. This led to a business relationship developing with a social enterprise providing sustainable products around the world, with a focus on supporting schools to provide free sanitary products to their students. Kam and Fifi have written a developed business plan and presented this at Bedales, proposing a partnership with Bohunt. This has gained traction and we are hoping that these products will be available in bathrooms around the school and the boarding houses before too long.

Millie Kennedy has been researching far right radicalisation – what causes it, how it happens, how to prevent it, and how to help those affected. Recently, and particularly after the capitol riots in Washington, we have all been on alert to the rise in far-right movements. Milly says: “I wanted to understand why this has come about and how to prevent it from happening in the future. After my research, I came to conclusions about what I could do.  I will be working with the well-being department to add to the curriculum – e.g. how to spot dangerous material online. I have also been in contact with Damian Hinds, MP for East Hampshire, asking what the government is doing about the growing threat, and I will be working with Block 2 pupils at Dunhurst, teaching a lesson on what to look out for on social media and online, to hopefully spread awareness amongst the most vulnerable age group.”

Skylar Cazac has been looking at how to encourage the roll-out of microgrids for rural electrification in South Asia and Africa. Skylar says: “Approximately 13 percent of the world’s population currently live without reliable electricity supplies, and are mainly situated in rural areas of South Asia and Africa. Often, these people have to make do with old diesel generators that are expensive, highly polluting and at times very dangerous. With the rapid decrease in the cost solar and wind power plants and the roll-out of energy storage solutions, renewable energy powered microgrids can provide an excellent climate friendly leapfrog alternative, to enable mass rural electrification. This said, these systems can still be expensive to set up due to technology being used. I have been researching hybrid financing solutions to enable a mass introduction of these systems into areas in need as an important tool in the energy transition. The type of systems that I envisage would combine three strategies to raise equity in order to sponsor and foster the rapid development of microgrids: 1) charitable crowdfunding schemes; 2) a “carbon trading” platform, to raise capital from Western companies that wish to offset their CO2 emissions by financing renewable energy production in developing countries; 3) microgrid finance schemes for the villagers who would benefit from green electricity provided by the highly subsidised microgrids. I would like to collaborate with impact focused financial investors to achieve scale in this project.”