Ballymahon student takes prize in national poster competition

A Ballymahon student was the national secondary school winner of the recent Green Schools poster competition.

Green-Schools had its Poster and Video Competition Awards online today, Wednesday, with a virtual ceremony shown on screens in schools and homes all around the country. Participants were also treated with a presentation from the award-winning Cartoon Saloon. This year, Tanna Kruger from Mercy Secondary School, Ballymahon was a regional winner in the poster competition and at the ceremony it was further announced that Tanna was the overall national winner in the secondary school category.

The popular competition focuses every year on a theme around water sustainability and is open to Irish primary and secondary students. This year’s theme was ‘valuing water’ which tied in with the UN’s water theme for 2021. Despite the disrupted year for schools with Covid restrictions and closures there were over 1,400 entries for the poster competition.

Green-Schools Manager Cathy Baxter said: “We kept the competition awards separate to our other Water Awards this year which allowed for an awards ceremony that was more focussed on the competition winners and it gave more time for guest speakers. Different classes from the winning schools could log on, while the parents and any wider family members, who wanted to, could log on from home too. It created a lovely atmosphere to celebrate and award the winners and showcase their winning entries. Every year we are amazed and proud to see how much these young students understand how valuable our water is and how to best conserve it. This is communicated with such clarity in their fabulous posters and videos, and it is a great opportunity to recognise and celebrate that.”

The poster competition has twelve regional winners and three national winners in three categories – Junior Primary, Senior Primary and Secondary. The regional winners win a professionally framed copy of their poster and a €250 Arts & Hobby Voucher. The national winners also win €500 for the Green-Schools committee in their school. The video winners get €2,000 for the Green-Schools committee in their school, with the two runners up winning €500 each.