Ecole Secondaire Lacombe Composite High School

Growing student leaders to save the planet

Ecole Secondaire Lacombe Composite High School, a secondary school in Lacombe, Canada threw down the gauntlet to its students, challenging them to become leaders on environmental issues, and their award-winning projects have gone from strength to strength.

When in 2006 a teacher remarked to a student that “words without actions were meaningless” it proved the spark of inspiration that would change the school forever. A year later, the student came back with an offer of starting a project that would take the school off the electricity grid. She put together a vision statement, a plan and gained the support of fellow students and the school’s environmental club, EcoVision, was born.

The club’s long-term projects have seen it collaborate with the local community, universities and NGOs on initiatives to protect the environment. Over the course of four years it developed a 6kW solar array. When a fire broke out on the school roof in 2010 and destroyed the solar project, the sight of students crying underscored the importance of the club’s work and it rose from the ashes to produce new initiatives such as a near net-zero 850 ft tall geodesic tropical greenhouse. In 2012, the club helped create a 2-acre garden that eventually produced two hundred fruit trees, fifty vegetable beds and several patches that grew potatoes, garlic and squash. A few years later, the school started a beekeeping programme with eight hives.

If Ecole Secondaire Lacombe Composite High School were to win World’s Best School Prize for Environmental Action, it would use the funds to invest in student-led environmental initiatives and create scholarships that would allow students to earn their qualifications through workshops, courses and other programmes. It would also use the funds to launch outreach programmes to help other schools to develop similar environmental initiatives.