Love Your Wellies is the flagship community outreach initiative of the FarmPEAT Project—a results-based agri-environmental scheme in the Midlands of Ireland. In August 2024, Love Your Wellies was awarded 1st Place in PREPSOIL’s Best Teaching Practices Competition which celebrates European youth soil health education. PREPSOIL (Preparing for the Soil Deal for Europe Mission) raises awareness of the need for healthy soils through their knowledge hub and showcase of sustainable land use projects. PREPSOIL’s mission to increase farmers’ uptake of soil related measures funded under the Common Agricultural Policy. Love Your Wellies has the same aim of improving the sustainable management of peat soils by engaging with young people, who are the farmers and environmental decision-makers of the future!
Through the Love Your Wellies initiative, FarmPEAT educates primary and secondary school students about the carbon and biodiversity benefits of peatlands, and gives them the opportunity to celebrate the wider peat landscape they all live in. During the programme’s duration from 2022 to 2024, FarmPEAT engaged with over 1,500 students through workshops, webinars, and field trips to raised bogs. Students were then invited to use their new knowledge and tell their own story of Ireland’s unique raised bog landscape through an annual competition.
Over the three years, Love Your Wellies received over 800 entries from students in Ireland, Europe, and the United States—one entry came all the way from India, where farmers also manage peat soils! Any art medium was supported to allow for self-expression and creativity. Winning entries included drawings, paintings, plays, board games, 3D models, poems, comics, embroidery, and even a digital animation. By applying their knowledge in a creative way, the hope is that students also develop an open-minded approach to solving agricultural and environmental problems. FarmPEAT encourages students to think of their local landscape history and heritage alongside wider challenges associated with the peat landscape. By doing this, they can build a better understanding of how local actions have a national and global significance.
The Love Your Wellies initiative has been a resounding success. It has increased the visibility of FarmPEAT’s work on agricultural peat soils and inspired young people to develop closer connections to the peatland landscape. One local primary school student wrote, “It was very special, we had a lot of fun learning about home and doing this project so thanks for the opportunity.” This was echoed by a secondary school finalist in the 2023 Love Your Wellies Competition, who said, “I think it was a great competition and I think everyone did an amazing job at all their pieces. I learned a lot about the environment and greenhouse gases.”
PREPSOIL’s Best Teaching Practice Award is therefore a very heartening recognition of the initiative itself, as well as the effort contributed by participating students and teachers to the Love Your Wellies workshops and competition. The Love Your Wellies initiative hopes that it inspires more agri-environmental projects in Ireland and Europe to foster closer links with farmers, students, and other local community members.
FarmPEAT’s end of project conference will take place on the 24th October 2024.
To learn more about the FarmPEAT project, or the Love Your Wellies Initiative, visit the FarmPEAT website.
