A half dozen schools in Chatham-Kent have accepted a challenge from students in Lambton County to promote climate change awareness.
Holy Rosary Catholic School in Wyoming is participating in National Sweater Day for the second year in a row but this time students are upping the ante. The event is organized by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and asks people around the world to dress warmer and turn down their heat to help fight climate change on February 7.
The students threw a challenge out for others in the St. Clair Catholic District School Board to join and six schools from Chatham-Kent answered the call. St. Anne Catholic School in Blenheim is one of the local schools participating and principal Stacy Shipley said they plan to win.
"We love challenges at St. Anne Blenheim and we love to win challenges," Shipley said. "I feel like our school is very competitive and myself and the vice principal are very competitive so we are challenging our students."
Shipley added to make it Canadian students are allowed to also wear toques and count it towards the total numbers. She said initially the staff and students believed they were a shoo-in to win the challenge because they have the biggest population and thought it was total students. Shipley said they were informed it is actually based on the percentage of enrollment, so while still confident, she doesn't think it is a sure thing anymore.
Win or lose though Shipley hopes the kids get the point of the event.
"It's important because the students in this school are going to be the ones living in this environment and this climate down the road," Shipley said. "Looking at the information from the World Wildlife Fund, we see that residential heating is a major contributor to carbon-dioxide emissions so being a part of this helps them think they are a part of something bigger. Also knowing something as small as turning down the heat two degrees can make such a big difference."
While Shipley said the weather Wednesday made it tough to spread the word to all the students as only about 120 students made it in, Christ the King Catholic School in Wallaceburg has been preparing for a while. Lisa Walker is the principal and said they might not be as competitive as St. Anne but they have been planning for the event.
"I am not sure what is going to happen but we are going to try our best to get the maximum participation," Walker said. "We have a poster from [WWF] and our Social Justice Team has gone from class to class to explain the event so we are hoping to do really well. We've had it on our announcements... it's also on our school calendar so [students] can see it there too."
Walker said the students decided to get involved because it was something they hadn't done before and it was really easy to do. She added while the majority of the school has a centralized temperature control system she can't change, any offices with thermostats will be turned down at least two degrees to honour the spirit of National Sweater Day.
The schools with the highest participation will receive a copy of Dr. Seuss' book The Lorax, which is about how people can cause major harm to the environment if they aren't careful.
Holy Family Catholic School, St. Michael Catholic School, St. Ursula Catholic School, Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School and St. Vincent Catholic School are the other schools competing in the municipality. There are 12 schools total taking part in the challenge across the school board.
According to the WWF carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 2.2 megatonnes if every Canadian turned down the thermostat by two degrees each winter, which is the equivalent of removing 350,000 cars from the road.