Live Simply Award
– Pope Francis in Laudato Si –
In response to Pope Francis’ call in Laudato Si, “responsibility within creation and our duties towards nature and the Creator are an essential part of our faith”, we have accepted our duty to embark on CAFOD’s ‘LiveSimply’ journey.
At St Joseph’s, we endeavour to ‘live simply’ and care for the God’s creation to be best of our ability. As God’s children, we accept our responsibility as a school community to respond to the Church’s call to live simply, sustainably and in solidarity with the world’s poorest. Through our rigorous and robust curriculum, our children understand the complexity of the ecological crisis, which is both social (global poverty, injustice and social inequality) and environment (climate change, species loss, pollution of land, sea and air).
Further to this, the children of St Joseph’s understand that Jesus lived and preached a simple, humble life and our duty, as the Body of Christ, to take meaningful action on the ecological crisis our world faces today. By living out our Catholic Social Teachings, we have and will continue to take meaningful action on this world crisis by working collectively (with our school community) to provide opportunities to have a positive impact on the social and environmental issues currently facing the world.
To earn this award, we need to show as a school we are living:
- Simply – how we encourage our families to consume less in our daily lives. Taking the time to be more reflective, prayerful and considerate to others.
- In solidarity with the poor- being aware that other people might be experiencing difficulties, vulnerabilities, injustice or exclusion.
- Sustainably with creation- learning ways that can help rebalance our relationship with the environment. Remembering that God gave us this Earth for us to care for.
We already do so much as a school to fulfil these objectives, but this year we have planned some special events which we will have a positive impact upon our global, local and school communities. These include:
- Working to help tackle hunger both in our community and globally.
- Collaborating with local politicians to make our area cleaner.
- Thinking of ways we as a school can become more sustainable in our day to day lives.
