On Friday, the Liss Federation was represented at the East Hants COP 26 conference in Alton by Mr Stanley, Sophie and Lola. Liss were among many exhibitors at the conference which was open to the general public.
Sophie and Lola talked about all the positive changes that have happened at the school over the last ten years in the fight against climate change as well as the work the school has done overseas with Kafuro Primary School due to our association with the Queen Elizabeth Parks Project and the British Council
The pupils were visited by many different people including Damian Hinds MP. They soon had all sorts of people signing climate change pledges which we will be displaying in school. They were also interviewed for BBC Radio Solent.
There was also an opportunity to visit the main conference room and see some of the speeches as well as some of the other exhibitors. The girls were fascinated by a company called iRED who had a thermal gun. The exhibitors showed them some neat tricks with it.
Everyone had a fantastic afternoon and the girls were an absolute credit to the school.
The Liss Federation display
Trying out some amazing software from the River Wey society
By the end of the afternoon the display board was covered in pledges
Merry Christmas to all our friends at Kafuro Primary School and to all the twinned schools in the UK and Uganda. At Liss, we had our carol service yesterday where we read the story of the nativity and sang Christmas carols. We send to all of our friends our best wishes and the message of hope given through the birth of Jesus Christ.
On Friday, Liss Junior School held their annual School Grounds Day. This started at lunchtime with parents being invited into the school to have lunch with the children. Then, the afternoon was devoted to cleaning up the school grounds and improving the school environment. Among the tasks carried out by the children were the following:
Ash Class – Front flower bed were replanted. Tyres behind amphitheatre were filled with compost and planted.
Oak Class – Collected leaf liter and repositioned logs to line track.
Willow Class – Refurbished our bug hotel
Beech Class – picked up litter from around the school grounds
Birch Class – Wood collection for the cob oven. Made bird feeders and get plant pots ready for the summer.
Pine Class – Cleared out and replanted raised beds with vegetables
Rowan Class – Bottle greenhouse pots were prepared for replanting. Mr Stanley is preparing to grow tomatoes but admits that they can never be as good as Kafuro tomatoes. The wormery was topped upwith food waste and compost distributed.
We were also joined by rangers from Queen Elizabeth Country Park who helped us to clean our pond and cut back some of our willow.
Many hands make light work and by the end of the afternoon the school grounds looked much better. We would like to ask Ugandan schools how they keep their school grounds tidy (we have already heard from Kafuro in the past, it would be nice to hear from some other schools).
On Wednesday Mr Stanley visited the Houses of Parliament to attend the ceremony for the International Schools Award. As readers of this blog will know, Liss gained their reaccreditation back in July. The prestige in gaining this award is signified by the fact that the ceremony is held at the seat of government for the UK.
To get into the houses of Parliament, Mr Stanley had to go through airport-style security before he was allowed in. There was a long wait in the main lobby of Parliament before everyone was called into the Members’ Dining Room where the ceremony was going to take place.
Mr Stanley was told by British Council staff that he was going to have his photo taken with Damian Hinds, the Secretary of State for Education. Mr Hinds is also the local member of Parliament for East Hampshire which covers Liss. Mr Hinds gave a fantastic speech where he talked about how important it was that schools carried out their international work and how Britain needed to reach out to th erest of the world. The second half of his speech was all about Liss and Kafuro. Mr Hinds praised the work of the two schools and said how inspirational it was that the schools had cooperated so well especially through the Kafuro Liss blog.
After the speech, Mr Stanley had time for a quick chat with Mr Hinds before they posed for a photo together. It was a very proud day for both Liss and Kafuro, and we hope it will inspire other UK and Uganda schools to work towards international schools accreditation.
Greetings to all of our friends in Uganda. Last Friday, Liss Junior School held its annual Harvest Festival at St Mary’s Church in Liss. One of the constant themes of the assembly was the amount of food waste that takes place in the world. Here are some facts and figures.
1.3 billion tons of food are wasted every year. This amounts to US$1 trillion dollars of wasted or lost food
Imagine that all the food waste is a country., it would be the third largest producer of carbon dioxide in the world, after the United States and China. What’s even worse is that just one quarter of all wasted food could feed the 795 million undernourished people around the world who suffer from hunger.
Food waste in rich countries (222 million tons) is approximately equal to all of the food produced in Sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tons).
If you’re a European or North American consumer, on average you will waste almost 100 kilograms of food annually, which is more than most people weigh. You will also waste 15 times more food than a typical African.
African food waste is due to a lack of technology and infrastructure whereas in the developed world most of the food waste comes from households. Food waste in Europe alone could feed 200 million hungry people.
Even worse, food waste generates 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide, which accelerates global climate change.
We would like to ask all of our friends in Ugandan schools to let us know what tips they would give children in the UK to avoid food waste.
On Saturday, nine Liss family members were part of the group that took part in the Park to Park Challenge from Staunton Country Park to Queen Elizabeth Country Park, a distance of about 8.6 miles. The purpose of the walk is to raise awareness about the work of rangers in Uganda and indeed in other countries, but there is also an opportunity to catch up with friends and see some amazing views.
We wonder if Kafuro children would consider a walk to bring attention to the hard work that rangers do in Uganda and around the world?
Congratulations to all the Liss children and their families for completing the walk.
Warm greetings to everyone at Kafuro Primary School and the wider Kafuro community. Today has been our last day of term and, in traditional fashion, we held our annual carol service at St Marys Church in Liss. Children in Years 5 and 6 read from the Bible while children from Years 3 & 4 created a tableau of scenes from the Nativity. The children and parents of Liss Junior School sang carols that made the heart soar.
We would like to wish all our friends in Kafuro a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We look forward to sharing our learning with you in 2018.
The alarm sounded at 6.30am, but for once I wasn’t reluctant to get up as today was the day that I’d been waiting for a long time…the chance to see the Ugandan national rugby team in action against Zimbabwe at Legends Rugby Club in Kampala. We had packed and left by 7.10am ready for the seven-hour plus drive to Kamplala. The good news was that no elephants decided to delay us leaving Mweya, the bad news was that the car was making an awful noise. We reached Kasese at 8.10am and stopped at the Shell garage for fuel. I asked the staff to have a quick look under the bonnet while the car was being filled up. One of the staff unscrewed the cap for the radiator and his head was nearly blown off by a massive cloud of steam and boiling water. Half a bottle of coolant and several bottles of cold water later seemed to solve that particular problem. Power steering fluid was also topped up and all four tyres inflated. Half an hour later, we were on our way and the car sounded a lot better.
The drive to Kampala was uneventful. We stopped at Fort Portal for forty five minutes to have breakfast, but got to a shopping mall just by the ground at 2.50pm. We were going to meet Steve and Karen Peach, Jan and Rebecca from the Twinning Project along with Ronnie, our erstwhile guide at 3.00pm. To kill a bit of time, Mrs Green and I went into the mall and did a bit of present shopping for family and friends. The mall was very western looking and ample proof of how fast Uganda is changing in some aspects.
The others soon turned up and we collected our tickets from Ronnie. I had bought these several months before along with a Uganda Cranes rugby shirt. I had been after one of these for years and they were only on very limited release, so I was very pleased to get one. When we arrived at the ground, we had to go through lots of security checks, but once we were inside the atmosphere was brilliant. Mrs Green and I had VVIP tickets which meant that we had a table to ourselves under cover at one end of the ground with waiter service. The others were in the stands on the side, which was actually a better view, but also meant that they would fry under the hot African sun.
The game itself was very exciting particularly the first half. Zimbabwe scored after the first couple of minutes and I thought it was going to be one of those days, but Uganda hit back immediately and their fly half, Phillip Wokarach, began to run the show. He is one of those players that you just love to watch because he has so many tricks to his game and he was showing off his full range of outrageous dummies, flicks and passes behind his back. The crowd absolutely loved it and there was all sorts of dancing whenever Uganda scored. There was a man whose sole purpose appeared to be to wind the crowd up with his dancing and blowing a vuvuzela. It certainly worked!
The game was played at a furious pace. Uganda scored some sensational tries and ran out deserved 38 – 12 winners. Mrs Green and I were also delighted to find out that we got some free food as part of our VVIP experience. The waiters came round with big plates of roast potatoes, sausages, chicken wings and samosas which you could help yourself to.
At the end of the game both teams posed for a photo with some children who had been playing tag rugby at half time. Many of the Uganda team started by playing tag rugby, so we are hoping that the Conservation Cup will produce future internationals. We left the ground, said goodbye to Ronnie and the others, who are heading back to the UK, and drove to our place of residence for the next two nights. It’s called Banana Eco Village and is about 15km outside Entebbe. We arrived just after 8.00pm, had a very nice chicken curry and retired for the night. We were both very tired but happy.
Tomorrow is a day of rest and relaxation at the eco village. We’re both looking forward to it!
Greetings to all our friends at Kafuro. Today, the children at Liss Junior School had a very special visitor – the England women’s international rugby player, Amy Cokayne. She is the cousin of Issy (Year 6) and Freddie (Year 3), and she came in to talk to the children in assembly and then to run some tag rugby coaching sessions.
All the classes from Year 3, Year 4 & Year 6 (Year 5 were visiting another school) got to play special games with Amy to improve their skills. They were also able to ask Amy about what it takes to be a professional athlete and the sacrifices she has to make.
We would like to ask the following question to the children at Kafuro: If you could invite a Ugandan sports person in to your school, who would it be and why?
On Friday, Liss Junior School held its annual School Grounds Day with children, teachers and parents working together to maintain the school grounds. Each class took on different jobs:
Ash Class: Cleared the cob oven area and applied a new skim of clay to the oven.
Oak Class: renewed the plant pots outside each classroom and put in bird feeders around the school using coconut shells, lard and birdseed.
Willow Class: Collected wood for the cob oven and planted the front border of the school
Beech Class: Created a new compost heap near the school nature area.
Birch Class: Renewed our minibeast hotel.
Pine Class: Renewed the butterfly houses.
Rowan Class: Continued building the bottle greenhouse, helped clean the nature area and cut back willow. Found worms to keep our wormery topped up.
Maple Class: Used logs to line the path up to our nature area.
Children gathering wood for the cob oven
There was much activity around the garden area
Mrs Armstrong led the skim of the cob oven
Pine Class refurbished the butterfly houses
Oak Class made bid feeders
Collecting leaves for the compost
Building the compost heap
Children cleaned the nature area
Joe Williams supervised the cutting back of the willow
Maple Class replanted the sensory plant bed
Digging for worms
Steve Peach and Joe led the cleaning of the pond
Conyinuing to build the bottle greenhouse
Cutting back the willow.
The badger sett on the edge of our nature area.
We were joined for the morning by Joe Williams and Steve Peach from Queen Elizabeth Country Park. They led the cleaning of the nature area and cutting back the willow. Steve also identified that we have an active badger sett in our nature area. He is going to install a camera so that we can try and see the badgers come out at night (badgers are notoriously shy creatures).
Mr Stanley has set Kafuro children a challenge for this year. Each class at liss Junior School has planted tomato seeds and we want to compare the plants we grow with those grown by Kafuro children. Mr Stanley has told the Liss children that this is a really tough challenge as Yowasi says that Kafuro tomatoes are the best in the Rubirizi district of Uganda. We hope that you wil post some photos of your tomato plants growing.
Rowan Class pupils set up filled the tomato planters with compost
