Louth students take top prizes in Green Schools Awards – O’Dowd

Fine Gael TD for Louth, Fergus O’Dowd, has congratulated two Louth students who’ve taken top prizes in the Green Schools “Water Schools of the Year” awards.

“Brendan Ngandu, St. Mary’s Discesan School, Louth received the Green-Schools Ambassador Award for spreading awareness of water conservation issues in his school and wider community, while Sophie Newman from Ardee Community School won the Eastern Midlands Secondary School Green-Schools Irish Water Poster Competition. This year’s Poster Competition theme was ‘Be Water Smart’.

“At the awards Brendan Ngandu was described as being a true example of a Green-Schools Ambassador, as he shared all he learnt during the ambassador programme for the water theme with his schoolmates, Green-Schools committee and the general public. He gave presentations in his school, created a Facebook page dedicated to the programme, placed information on TV monitors around the school, held a fundraising bake sale to purchase water butts for his school, created a music video called “Can’t flush this” and was involved in a trip to a wastewater treatment plant for the Think Before You Flush campaign. He also, wrote articles in Drogheda Life and Drogheda Independent and was interviewed on LMFM radio.

“Brendan’s future plans include a survey of awareness levels of the Think Before You Flush and Beat the Microbead campaign run by Clean Coasts and organising a beach clean-up with the local costal community at Laytown.

“I would like to congratulate both Brendan and Sophie for the great work that they’ve done. These awards recognise the dedication and innovation shown by schools that have been working on the Water theme and are receiving the Green Flag award for Water this year. This is the third year of the awards and I’m delighted to see such success and involvement among Louth students.”