I just wanted to pass on our sincere thanks to Karen Blanchfield who headed up our environmental activity week last week. Who would have thought 450 children could be so enthusiastic about litter picking and reducing waste?

Karen had an absolute wealth of knowledge that has inspired both pupils and staff alike. Her energy, enthusiasm and passion for helping our planet is contagious and I hope the legacy of her work last week will continue. Her work has been quite the launch pad for our school to follow a more environmentally friendly path in future.

I know her post has time limited funding but my colleagues and I saw how vitally important her role is in reaching the people who have the future of our planet in their hands.

Thank you Wychavon once again for providing such expertise and support,

Mrs Watson

St Peter's CofE School

" I just wanted to share with you our experiences of working with Karen this year as she has had a massive impact on the learning and attitudes of the children here at Bretforton Village School. 

Karen worked with us last year, sharing with us the story of Boyan Slat and his efforts to clean up rivers, particularly in relation to single-use plastic. The children loved hearing about him, and Karen's assembly to the children inspired several of them to do litter picks in their own neighbourhood. She led sessions in each class where she showed the children the kind of littering that happened locally and how much had been left in what looked like clean areas. The children's understanding of the impact of litter increased enormously because of Karen's passionate delivery of the information she shared and over the course of the year, this has been sustained in and out of school, with children being eager to clean up the local area but also to ensure that they do not leave litter behind them. Most recently, Karen came back into school and worked with our youngest children and such was the impact of her previous visit and assembly, they were able to recall the key messages she had delivered and talk about what they had done to improve their local environment as a result. This is the greatest testament I can give, to the work that Karen has done to make a difference and why her work with us has been so impactful.  "

Kevin Riley 

Head of School Bretforton Village School 

Thanks for all your energy and enthusiasm with the children this week, they really enjoyed their sessions with you. The children collected 29 bags of litter from the community over 11 workshop sessions. Over 4000 pieces of litter was removed from our local community areas with litter dating back to 1997. WOW