Climate Solutions Conference
We are excited to announce that StGIS will host the inaugural interschools “Climate Solutions Conference” on 26th – 27th April 2024. We will bring together students, educators, and professionals to collaboratively address and to boldly move forwards on the urgent issue of climate change. For delegate and sponsor registrations please email m.bristol@stgis.at.
Sustainability at StGIS
WE WORK TODAY FOR OUR TOMORROW
We aim to help St Gilgen International School develop within a full and broad understanding of sustainability.
We feel that the acknowledgement of our impact and needs gives us power to create change. We undertake to act, live and learn with thought by trying to make sustainability accessible to everyone, creating a greener future by collaborating with other schools and communities, giving everyone an opportunity to be a part of the solution.
In particular, we aim to:
- Use resources in a circular manner, everything gets reused whenever possible, creating a circular system within our community.
- Raise awareness about environmental problems and the impact we have on the environment.
- Make contributions to global and local projects with our widest community.
- Reduce our carbon footprint to make the school more sustainable.
- Include every student, every member of staff and every member of the school community.
WE ARE THE ECO-TEAM
We are a team of young, motivated, and innovative students who are passionate about making our world a better place. Our mission is to act, live and learn with thought by trying to make sustainability accessible to everyone, creating a greener future by collaborating with other schools and communities, giving everyone an opportunity to be a part of the solution.
Climate change is not only a problem but also an opportunity for innovation and for us to think about new ways to preserve sustainability.
Green Minds
GREEN MINDS is the new and significantly improved name for our interschool sustainability committee! We are a group of student leaders and staff from St Gilgen International School, the Bundesgymnasium in Bad Ischl and the HAK in Bad Ischl – all working together collaboratively towards sustainability in education and in our everyday lives.
We have many projects which we work on together and there is much in the pipeline. We won the Lions Young Ambassador Award for the whole of Austria in 2022 and are now into the finals of the Jugend Innovativ in Vienna in May 2023 – a top level event attracting the best student initiatives across Austria with EUR 42,000 prize for the best!
Our team is on its second generation and we intend to build this to last, handing projects down as students graduate and pass on to the next generation of sustainability leaders. Here is the team at present:
Sustainable Consumption
Discover grade 8 students' sustainable alternatives, inspiring a school-wide event.
Grade 9 Project - Green Walls
Find out more about our student led, Green Walls Project.
Campus Biodiversity
Insect hotels, to bee meadows, bulbs, strawberries and propagating, greening the campus'
A Proudly Accredited Eco-School
As of June 2022, we are delighted and proud to have been awarded the Ecoschool Green Flag and to be a part of the Ecoschool community.
What does this mean? It does not mean that we have got everything right, nor that the school buildings are carbon neutral, but it does mean that we are doing our utmost to ensure that our students, all our students, leave StGIS with a true and full understanding of sustainability in all its forms and that our students leave with the desire and the strength to bring positive change to the world they enter after school.
How do we do this? We embed it in the curriculum, we have built a Summit Curriculum based on the SDGs, we inform staff, we run activities, we have built in into our systems and trips, we attempt to role model it at all levels, we encourage advocacy and many incorporate elements into their grade 9 and 10 projects.
