As part of IEHN's forthcoming meetings for 2017/2018, we are pleased to announce that recent TCD Honorary Doctorate awardee Patricia Oliver will present a lecture entitled "Flagging the Future". This lecture will take place in the Robert Emmet Theatre, Arts Block, from 18:00-19:00 on the 8th of November 2017.

Abstract: “Looking back so as to move forward” is how Patricia Oliver approaches the story of the setting up of the Environmental Education Unit of An Taisce, its national and international programmes and, in particular, the genesis of “Green Schools”. With an offer of funding of £ 1000 from a local authority nearly twenty years ago, she traces the Green Schools programme from its first introduction to Irish teachers and the set-backs and triumphs which led to the astonishing success story it is today. She salutes the people who helped along the way and records its growth from primary to secondary schools and then the huge leap to “Green Campus” and the exciting initiatives being pioneered by Irish third level institutions today. She asks what new challenges lie ahead and what tools today’s students have in their armoury to help overcome them.

About Patricia Oliver: In 2017 Patricia was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (LL.D.) by Trinity for her work on environmental education. Former journalist and publisher Patricia Oliver is the Founder and from 2000 was the full-time Director of An Taisce’s Environmental Education Unit, now the largest and most successful environmental education organisation in the country and one of the most successful internationally. Her links with Trinity go back to the 1990s when as Chairwoman of An Taisce she took over the FEE Blue Flag programme initiated in Ireland by Karen Dubsky of Coastwatch and became the Irish representative of FEE (Foundation for Environmental Education) later serving as its Treasurer. She co-ordinated a range of programmes for Ireland and grew them professionally to become models for Europe, while maintaining the links with Trinity and serving on many other environmental and educational organisations. Through the Green Schools Programme, she has had a transforming effect on hundreds of thousands of Irish children. Her presentation of the Irish Green-Schools Programme at the 12th Commission on Sustainable Development at the United Nations in 2004 was acknowledged as the "Best of Best Practice".