Two Meath women receive Climate Ambassador Awards

Two Meath women have won a Climate Ambassador Outstanding Achievement Award for their work in the service of the environment.

Stef Greene from Derrockstown and Sinead Corbally from Julianstown were among those to receive accolades at The Climate Ambassador Awards held on Friday, November 18th, serving to recognise the tremendous effort and dedication demonstrated throughout the year.

Stef values the importance of a connection to nature above all else and challenges climate anxiety with hope and positive action. She empowers young families to seize the day, get active while taking feel-good climate actions. She presented at the Ploughing Championships and All Together Now festival, helping people to talk to kids about climate change in an age appropriate and fun way.

She has also delivered lots of school workshops in Meath and is now in the process of converting her website Nature Days into a charity. Nature days is an online free resource which inspires families to get children to play outdoors more, connecting with nature and tapping into the associated health and wellbeing benefits along with empowering climate action.

Sinead is a former DCU Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering student and working as an Energy and Sustainability Manager in energy management to generate calculations regarding Green House Gas emissions, waste, water and energy baselines and projections. She has taken the initiative in her workplace through several exciting renewable energy and energy reduction projects. With the rise of energy costs, she focused on a solar project, a water saving initiative and an energy project reducing GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions.

Each Climate Ambassador received a certificate of recognition, with an additional twelve outstanding awards presented to teams and individuals from swap shops and flash mobs, to musicians and artists, sports stars, farmers, social entrepreneurs, community activists, businesses and universities.

About the Climate Ambassador Programme

191 citizens were chosen to be Climate Ambassadors in 2022. The programme, which has been in operation since 2018, has become stronger over time as Climate Ambassadors have acquired crucial skills and confidence to take action, motivating others to follow in their footsteps along the way.

Climate Ambassadors receive training at the start of the year in climate science, solutions and communications which enables them to carry out climate actions. Throughout the year they are asked to undertake four key actions – two climate communications and two climate actions, though many participants get involved in many more projects. This programme allows individuals to join a strong network of dedicated people who share knowledge, gain insight from one another, and forge long lasting relationships.

Over the course of the year, Climate Ambassadors based throughout the Republic of Ireland carried out 661 climate actions, directly engaging over 274,000 people, and created 2,671 climate communications, reaching an estimated 5.6 million people.