Education and Volunteering

The CEI has a history of working with schools and youth groups providing educational activites.  We also provide volunteering opportunities for community members within most of our projects.

Volunteering

Education

One of our flagship education project has been the bird viewing project, however we also go pond dipping, minibeast hunting, building bird boxes and much more!  

We have worked with schools, nursury schools, scouts and youth groups.  Having the wildlife garden in New Cumnock means we can always organise a garden planting session! 

The CEI Bird Viewing Project

   

This bird viewing project has established garden birds viewing facilities at 3 primary schools.At the core of the project were nest boxes with cameras concealed within the roof (“nestcams”). Each nestcam has a wireless connection to a computer viewing station within the school, where a software program is used to digitally record any movement within the nestbox. The computer also acts as a console to view live pictures from within the nestbox.

Throughout the duration of the project one class from each of the schools took responsibility for feeding birds. Each day the class filled up bird feeders, put out food on a bird table or in a hanging bird feeder and recorded the different species they spotted.

An important aspect of this project was to make the results accessible to everyone within the local community.   A 15 minute video showing footage from the primary schools and the nestboxes has been put together telling the story of one year of the project. 

Project sponsors: 
Scottish Natural Heritage
The Horace Gillman Trust

Plastic Bottle Greenhouses

Can an eco-friendly building project involve an entire community and make a difference to the local environment? YES!  The CEI has now been involved with 3 plastic bottle greenhouses!  

                 

This aim of these fantastic projects was to build greenhouses almost entirely of 2 litre plastic drinks bottles.

The first CEI greenhouse was built in Muirkirk in 2005... the second in New Cumnock in 2009, and the third was a New Cumnock Primary School project which the CEI gave assistance but the eco-committee did all the organising!

Muirkirk's Greenhouse

Starting in November 2004, the children of Muirkirk Primary School and members of Muirkirk Enterprise Group were set the challenge of collecting over 1500 plastic bottles to build an eco-friendly greenhouse that could be used by the primary school gardening club.

The level of enthusiasm for the project was incredible and by February 2005 the community had collected more than enough bottles to enable construction to begin.

To prepare the plastic bottle “building blocks”, two volunteering evenings were held in the local community hall. Volunteers were set the task of preparing the bottles by cutting the bottoms off.

A wooden greenhouse frame was constructed by volunteers and then the real work was done by the children of Muirkirk primary school who spent a day stacking the bottles and inserting them into the frame.

The greenhouse was officially opened by Robin Harper, MSP, on Wednesday 13th April. A superb day for the whole community, a staggering 200 people turned out to witness the grand opening.

Project sponsors
CSV Action Earth
Co-op Community Dividend Fund

New Cumnock's Greenhouse

In December 2008 the community in New Cumnock started collecting their bottles, again around 2000 were needed...

New Cumnock Primary School and New Cumnock Nursery collected bottles and quickly managed to fill nine builders tonne-sacks!

The East Ayrshire Strategy for Youth Group and members of the local community then began preparing the bottles and the EASY group made the greenhouse frame...

The 6th March 2009 saw our big greenhouse building day, the local community, EASY group, New Cumnock Primary School Eco Committee and the New Cumnock Nursery School all came along to help.