College Awareness Week Community Forest

Integrating Trinity into a community forest to raise awareness of the SDGs, the importance of education and the interdependence of the global goals.

This project seeks to include Trinity in a native Irish tree planting campaign to promote environmental awareness while emphasising the interdependence of the sustainable development goals. SDG 4 – Quality Education has been identified as a key linchpin in unlocking the other Sustainable Development Goals, playing a role in raising awareness generally but also providing the skills and fostering the collaboration necessary to achieve them. For that reason, this project seeks to plant a native Irish tree in Trinity College Dublin as part of a series tree plantings within the national College Awareness Week campaign (each November). Already this year, the campaign saw 4 native Irish trees planted in secondary schools across the 4 provinces in Ireland. This project will build on that success which saw the tree plantings celebrated by An Taoiseach Michaél Martin and Minster for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris, seeking to embed Trinity as part of this growing national ‘community forest’. The goal of these trees is to act as a symbol of the National College Awareness Week campaign (promoting SDG 4) while fostering greater biodiversity (SDGS 13 and 15) and building awareness of the SDGs generally. By planting this tree on campus and accompanying it with an information and plaque we will be able to raise awareness all year round of these goals while, representing the interdependence of the SDGs. It is important to note that the impact of this project will ripple much wider as it will form part of a national network of trees with such accompanying information and plaque. The work done in promoting the internal tree will be replicated in a number of other places of learning across the country (HEIs, schools, youth groups, community groups etc.).

This project will plant a native tree in an area of high footfall in Trinity to increase the reach of the project. However, it will also form part of a national campaign which will see similar projects take place across places of learning in Ireland (other HEIs, schools, community groups).

Native Irish Birch Tree – 250 euros Design/collating of accompanied information to be provided – 150 euros Accompanying plaque to raise awareness – 200 euros

Project will take place outside and will be consumed in a self-directed manner as people walk through campus.