Take part in this year’s Big Travel Challenge between Tuesday the 4th – Friday the 14th of February 2025
Love Our Health, Love Our Planet for Valentine’s Day
Is your school up to The BIG TRAVEL Challenge? With a Valentine’s twist!
This year’s Big Travel Challenge begins after St Brigid’s Day bank holiday and ends on St Valentine’s day – that’s why we are calling on schools to take these 9 days to Love Our Health and Love Our Planet!
For schools on the Travel theme, this fortnight can be used as the perfect opportunity to spring into action and set your school’s sustainable travel efforts off with a bang in 2025!
What are we looking for?
Whether your school is big or small, rural or urban, a primary, secondary school, or education centre – we are asking YOU to take on the challenge of achieving a measurable increase in one or more of the following sustainable modes of travel for the 9 days of this challenge – walking, wheeling, cycling, scooting, park ‘n’ stride, carpooling, or public transport – and to record the results on our Big Travel Challenge tracker.
We also want schools to spread the love of sustainable travel through creative and fun ways during the 9 days of the BTC. If a measurable increase in sustainable travel is especially difficult for your school’s circumstances, you can use these activities to spread awareness and knowledge in an alternative way!
The Big Travel Challenge is a chance to bring some love and energy back to your sustainable and active travel efforts! Stay tuned for our tracker with activity ideas for each travel mode.
How will your school be judged?
Your school will be judged on the innovation and creativity in promoting your chosen mode in your school along with the change in the number of students using the mode of travel you promote during the challenge; we’ll take everything into account.
What are the prizes?
National and Regional prizes
The overall National winning school will receive a cash prize of €1000 to be used for their Green-Schools Travel programme, with regional winners (4) each receiving a prize of €500.
In addition to this, all regional winners will be invited to the annual Green Schools Travel awards at Dublin Zoo planned for Thu 3rd April 2025 – which includes an entry to zoo for the winning school’s chosen representatives!
County prizes
This year we are continuing last year’s addition of the county prize category (extra sub-categories for Dublin and Cork). Can you be your county’s winning travel school for 2025? These winning schools will receive a certificate and a €200 budget towards a pizza party or ice cream van to their school to celebrate their brilliant efforts!
But wait, this year there’s even more prizes!
Best Bus or Carpool Karaoke:
Is the school bus a popular travel mode at your school? Are you hoping to give carpooling a try this year? We want to spotlight these sustainable modes of travel and hear about schools who aim to increase them through power of karaoke! Turn your journey to school into a private concert by creating a special playlist and blasting out some tunes! We would love to see some clips of the beautiful singing via the #BigTravelChallenge hashtag!
Most Inspiring Social Media Post:
This year we are looking for schools to spread the message of sustainable travel far and wide – including online. An extra prize will be given to the school who displays the most creativity in showing off their actions across their social media platforms using the #BigTravelChallenge hashtag! Secondary school students especially might like to call upon their photography or video editing skills for this one!
Instagram: @greenschools_travel Twitter: @GreenSchoolsIre Facebook
Most creative alternative sustainable action:
Though the main aim of the BTC is to increase the numbers of your chosen sustainable travel modes, we understand that for some schools this is more difficult than for others for various circumstances. That’s why are also encouraging alternative sustainable actions and will be awarding a prize to the school who takes the some of these listed suggested actions and make them their own. Describe your action as part of your application to be in with a chance of winning!
Staffroom Challenge:
As the staffroom challenge returns, can more staff in your school carpool, walk or cycle to work each day and be the leading example for students (or even put them all to shame)?
**Check out last year’s winners below – think you can raise the bar??**
If your school thinks you are up for one of these additional prizes, make the case for why you should win them when filling out your application form!
What to submit?
You can use your tracker to record the total number of students in your school travelling by your chosen mode on each day of the challenge. Before you start the challenge, record the average numbers for your chosen modes.At the end of the challenge, fill in the application form and tell us how you promoted your chosen mode and why your school deserves to win The Big Travel Challenge. You will need to let us know the number of students travelling by your chosen mode(s) on an average day before the challenge started and on Day 1 (Tue 4th), Day 4 (Fri 7th) and Day 10 (Fri 14th) during the challenge. The competition is open to all schools that have participated, or are participating, in the Green-Schools Travel and Global Citizenship Travel themes.
The deadline to submit your application is Fri 28th February.
We wish you the best of luck, and get moving!
Tell us about it!
Don’t forget to share your school’s actions and inspiration with @greenschools_travel on Instagram using #BigTravelChallenge
If you have any questions related to the competition, please contact your Travel Officer or email our team at: travelevents@eeu.antaisce.org