Schools promote energy saving scheme
Ten schools in Attica — four in central Athens, three in Haidari and one each in Peristeri, Dafni and Vyronas — are aiming to reduce their energy consumption by 10 percent within 10 weeks.
?The Power of Ten,? as the initiative has been called (www.thepoweroften.gr) uses social networking media as a teaching tool to promote environmentally friendly practices among school children, to show them how these practices can be applied at home and, in effect, to get kids to the point where they can help educate grownups on how to live green.
On the school level, energy monitors have been placed in the 10 buildings, delivering daily consumption readings and reporting whether measures being taken by the students and the children are making an impact.
?The Power of Ten? is organized by the Education Ministry and its 10,000 euro budget has come from a fund from the General Secretariat for Youth. On an execution level, the program has been put together with the contribution of the British Council and is monitored by a group of volunteers who have called themselves the ?Climate Ombudsman.?
The energy monitors, which will stop recording for the purposes of this program on April 15, were designed and constructed by the Greek company Intelen, a start-up that was founded in 2006 by a group of graduates of the National Technical University of Athens. ?The Power of Ten? is something of a pilot program for Intelen?s energy monitors, which may be installed in more schools around the country if the results from this program prove to be promising.
Also involved in the project are the non-governmental organizations WWF Hellas, Hippocrates 2,500 Years and ActionAid Hellas.
