waste less. live more
We inspire and help people to waste less and live more sustainably.
Ravenscliffe High School
We are a secondary special school in Halifax, West Yorkshire.
We provide practical work experience through environmental projects for our young people, who all have severe learning difficulties.
Every day our students, with staff support, learn a whole range of skills that benefit the wider Halifax community.
Our students complete weekly recycling collections for our school and 50 of our neighbours, delivering over 100 one tonne bags of plastic and cardboard materials to our household waste centre every year.
We help students towards greater independence in their travel by giving one-to-one support for a month to practice the journey to and from school. Now, over half of our students come to school on Yellow Buses or travel on their own from all over Calderdale. This has meant there are now fewer car journeys and fewer vehicles accessing the school site.
Our students also maintain a two-acre community garden based at the school for the public to use, as well as some local gardens that belong to a sheltered housing organisation and an Asian community group. And we litter pick once a week around the lake in Ogden Water, a local beauty spot, and try to keep the immediate area in Skircoat Green litter free.
In 2008, we were awarded an international Green Flag, Calderdale's Green School of the Year, and the Yorkshire in Bloom Gold Award for our school grounds.
We wanted to show that being disabled doesn't mean you can't achieve a change for the better in the communities in which you live. Many people locally have now got to know our students and have a greater awareness of disability because of the community work we do.
We believe the commitment and hard work of our students, despite their problems, is a true inspiration for others to do more.
