Easter Sunday - The Final Blog

Easter Sunday 2016!

 Happy Easter - Hallelujah - It's our Final Blog!!!

Hello everyone and first of all, a really big thank you for visiting our blog. We have loved making all the videos - it's been hard at times - but we've learned a lot along the way.

The first attempt at making the video for tonight took us over 10 minutes because really we'd love to talk about all the things we've learned by going on our lent adventure!                              

The main thing we'd like to say is that we discovered how important it is to have a Growth Mindset - to keep on learning and be determined to keep on learning and understand that no-one has all the answers. 

We've learned things we had no idea about, like Palm Oil destroying the rainforests, that factory farming of rabbits even exists (!!!) and that there are lots of things you can do to help causes you care about - like signing petitions, not buying certain products and just spreading the word about important topics, like we have with our blog. We've  learned  that some things are very complicated, like the refugee crisis and that some people would rather not help other people - but that made us more determined to keep going because there are so many people who need help.

There are lots of things we have changed about how we live our lives. We eat less meat, read labels more carefully and think twice about some of the stuff we throw out and how we can save energy.

We hope we've been able to make a difference and that by doing lots of small things, working together, we can change the world and save our planet. Here is a list of some of the things we've tackled on the Blog:

Day 1 - Litter
Day 2 - Sock Apples (recycling!)
Day 3 - Switch it Off
Day 4 - It's About Love
Day 5 - If it's not Dirty was at.... (think about our habits!)
Day 6 - END THE CAGE AGE!!!!!
Day 7 - We're Talking Rubbish
Day 8 - Stay Safe Online (and be Kind!!!)
Day 10 & 11 - Helping Refugees
Day 13 - Helping the Birds
Day 14 - Fight Against Cancer
Day 16 - Saving Our Libraries
Day 18 - Fairtrade Sunday & Thinking Beyond Fairtrade
Day ??? World Book Day - help the world love reading
Meat Free Monday - cutting down to save the planet!!!
Going Organic & Ending Factory Farming
Recycling helps others too
Animal Rescue - our story
Say No to Palm Oil
Cleaning up for Earth Hour
M'on the Bees - Saving our environment - we can all help

It's quite a list and we could have done so much more. If there is one thing we hope though, it's that everyone in the world adopts a Growth Mindset. If we learn every day and we are willing to change our minds about little things, maybe we will change our habits and work together for change.

We did this blog as part of Lent, rather than giving up something, we wanted to do something positive for the planet. We aren't experts about the Bible but we think Jesus would have learned a lot about himself by going into the dessert and fasting for all that time. He had to find the strength to face what he knew was coming because even if he believed he was the son of God, it must have been really hard.

No-one knows for sure if Jesus was the son of God or even if there is a God - that is for everyone to decide for themsleves what they believe. We think though, that the important thing is that he is someone who wanted to make the world a better place for everyone and that he wanted to teach people how to be good and kind to each other and have more love in the world.

We hope that by doing our blog we have tried to follow Jesus' example and play a small part in making the world a better place.

Wherever you are in the world and whatever religion you follow or whether you don't follow one at all, we hope you have enjoyed our blogs and we thank you for visiting our site.

Happy Easter to you all and many many Easter Blessings to everyone,

Amelie and Erin xxxx

Say No to Palm Oil

We're Into Week 5!!!

Say No to Palm Oil

Hello Everyone – we’ve been meaning to do this blog for quite a while – it’s about Palm Oil and the damage it’s doing to the environment, particularly the rainforests and the animals who live there.

 

There is lots of information on the internet about how harmful palm oil is to the planet and we’ll put some links at the bottom of the blog. Basically to get palm oil which is found in lots of foods and beauty products, companies are chopping down and burning huge areas of forest to make space for the palm oil trees - which is bad for the environment (because we need trees to breathe and burning them is even crazier) and also because it destroys certain animals’ habitat.

In particular, Orangutans, Tigers, Rhinos, Toucans, Frogs and Lizards. I found this out by visiting certain websites which were aimed at children and watching videos online. If we keep destroying their habitats, there won’t be any place for these animals to live and they may even become extinct (and in not very much time at all unfortunately).

Using unsustainable palm oil is also dangerous for people because we need trees for oxygen and also, lots of companies don’t seem to be treating workers fairly or the people who live in the places where the palm oil grows. Huge areas are being destroyed and once the trees are gone there isn't anything left to replace them.

There are so many foods which have palm oil in them. Common ones are: Chocolate products, popcorn, spreads like peanut butter, biscuits, stock cubes, breakfast cereals and lots and lots of other things too. We were looking for presents to give at Easter but most of the Easter eggs had some palm oil in them (and it was hard to find ones that were Organic and Fairtrade too….come on chocolate companies!!!!)

Some of our favourite things seem to have palm oil in them…and that’s not fair. We’re really very annoyed about it!!! We want to change this, so here are some of the things we want to do:

1. Put pressure on the companies not to use palm oil or to have it from sustainable sources. We might tweet them, email them, ask the shops we go to about getting palm oil friendly products (we did this the other day….they were very helpful)
2. Pressure the governments of both our countries and others where the palm oil is made to make laws to not allow unsustainable palm oil.
3. For both of these things we might sign petitions and join with other people so that companies and governments understand how important this is. 
4. When we are shopping we will try to buy things with No palm oil in them at all.
5. If we can’t find products with NO palm oil in them, we will buy sustainable palm oil products.
6. When we can’t find what we are looking for, we will allow Erin to have a massive tantrum in the shop until companies listen!

This is a very serious issue for the planet and lots of people are trying to raise awareness. Sometimes it looks like some companies are listening and things are getting better but it is so hard to tell from looking at packets, that we are a bit confused, so we are probably going to try to cut palm oil out as much as possible until we understand what is really going on! We are trying to do our bit by writing a blog but it would also be good to talk to friends and family about these issues because not everyone knows.

We’ve learned a lot we didn’t know by researching on the internet and also just looking at the things which we had in our cupboards to find out what kind of things had Palm oil in them. We generally try to be as environmentally friendly as possible but we found lots of things we didn’t realise had palm oil in them and that’s a good lesson for us.

One of the reasons we started this blog was because we wanted to help change the world through little things and by finding out things like this, we’ve discovered lots of new ways we can make a difference and change our habits too.

We hope by sharing our stories we’re giving other people ideas too.

Thanks for visiting – Amelie and Erin xxx

http://www.greenpeace.co.uk/blog/forests/palm-oil-whos-still-trashing-forests-20160303


Greenpeace Petition - Forests not Fires


http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/


http://www.ran.org/palm_oil

http://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/palm-oil

https://ypte.org.uk/factsheets/palm-oil/introduction

http://www.kidsagainstpalmoil.org/