Students clean up the streets for Her Majesty’s 90th Birthday

Students have been litter-picking on the streets of Chelmsley Wood, helping to clear up Britain in time for Her Majesty the Queen’s 90^th birthday in June.

Five staff and twenty students from Grace Academy donated a total of 40 hours to cleaning up the streets in the Fordbridge area of Chelmsley Wood, as part of the ‘Clean for the Queen’ campaign.

The idea behind the national campaign is to encourage individuals, volunteers, local councils, businesses and schools to show their gratitude to Her Majesty by cleaning up the country.

Year 8 student Megan Barnes from Grace Academy who was involved in the litter-picking said:

“When you are walking around your area, you don’t notice the rubbish. Doing this litter pick showed me how much litter there really is and it felt good to do something to help.”

The students were given a map of the streets they needed to clean by Solihull Council and Alan Brown, Head of Environmental Services, commented:

“It is always a pleasure to work with schools in any of our projects and it’s great that Grace Academy has been so involved with ‘Clean for the Queen’.

“It’s important that we educate children about looking after the environment and encourage future generations to take pride in looking after their communities.”

Laura Wadley, one of the coordinators of the street cleaning from Grace Academy, added:

“We want to encourage our students to invest in their local community and think this is good citizenship.  Quite a few of them were surprised how much litter there was and the impact this can have on a community.”