Our Lady of Good Counsel GNS

Ferrybank, Waterford

Thanks to all your hard work and the wonderful support of the whole school community, Our Lady of Good Counsel GNS has been awarded an eighth Green Flag. Well done to the Green School Committee and to Ms. Finucane.

Green Schools

For many years, Good Counsel has been a Green School. We have procured six Green Flags to date. Each flag takes two years to achieve. So far we have covered the themes of Litter, Waste, Energy, Transport, Biodiversity, Global Citizenship – Litter and Waste and we are currently working on the flag for Global Citizenship  –  Energy. There are 7 steps to procuring the flag:

We form a committee early in the school year with two children elected from the classes 3rd to 6th and we meet fortnightly. We make presentations at Assembly to keep children informed and we make regular contributions to The School Bell.
We could not be successful in the application for the flags without the co-operation of parents. We discourage the use of wrappers. We encourage the children to walk to school if possible, especially on Wednesdays ( The W.O.W.) campaign was part of the work for the second green flag.
We embrace the diverse cultures we have in Good Counsel and this ties in with Global Citizenship covering the themes of Fair Trade and National Days of celebration for different countries.
We also focus on climate change, which was never more urgent given global events in the past month.
We monitor wrappers and energy use weekly and a report is given weekly at Assembly.
Thinking ‘green’ is very much part of the ethos of the school