140th Anniversary - Our 'Year of Promise' Project
Blackheath High School was founded in 1880 by two inspiring women, Maria Grey and Emily Shirreff. Over the last 140 years the school has always been socially committed, seen in the heritage of our 40-year partnership with Johanna Street Board School and our collaboration with Woolwich Franciscan settlement in the 1890s.
Therefore to celebrate our school’s incredible 140th Anniversary, we want to continue with our giving and open spirit and focus our energies on working towards a sustainable environment, an area we know our students feel passionate about.
We will focus our year-long celebration in 2020 on showing appreciation for our beautiful environment and local community, with a sustainability project: BHS Year of Promise.
We are inviting all members of the Whole School community; students, parents, staff and alumnae to make environmentally-focussed pledges to help improve both our local community, and our planet.
Our target for 2020 is to make at least 140 pledges that will in some way contribute to preserving, improving and contributing positively to our natural environment along the themes of:
To join in you can email your pledge, along with any supporting photo or film to: BHSYearofPromise@bla.gdst.net
Or you can upload your pledge and any supporting pictures or films of your pledge activity to your (Facebook | Twitter | Instagram) social channels with the tags: #BHSYearofPromise #140thAnniversary
No pledge is too small. Small changes add up, especially when multiplied across our staff, pupils, parents and alumnae.
You can make pledges as an individual or collectively as a group. You could even think about joining a local community initiative:
- Join your nearest litter pick event as a part of The Great British Spring Clean 2020
- Join in with Thames River Watch and helping clean up and monitor the health of the Thames
- Contact the Woodland Trust who can assist with tree planting pledges you may wish to make
- Or help increase biodiversity in the local area by volunteering in replanting projects in Greenwich, Blackheath and Lewisham by joining local environmental group 'Greening South East London'. The volunteers seek to improve pockets of small to medium sized land by planting trees, shrubs and flowers.
You can read our former Head talking about the importance of teaching children about climate change in a healthy and constructive way in The Independent.
To mark the launch of our project we have made Whole School Pledges to reduce ocean plastic, in honour of our local maritime environment by the River Thames in Greenwich.
Download your ‘I’ve pledged’ graphic to use on social media.
"We hope 2020 will be remembered as the Year of Promise. We look forward to seeing how together we can all contribute to that legacy, and crucially create behaviour change to last well beyond our 140th Anniversary year"
Mrs Carol Chandler-Thompson, Head
We are delighted to have been awarded the prestigious international Eco Schools Green Flag Award which recognises pupils’ positive impact on the environment.
Well done everyone!