First Academy in Nice, France, with 55 new Ambassadors

May 2013, Felix was in Nice, France, to ask officially to the city to start a planting program and become the « greener city in France ». Motivated, the Côte d’Azur has already started to plant!

October, Tuesday the 8th 2013, 55 children from the Du Château school and International school of Nice have had the great opportunity to participate to the 1st Plant-for-the-Planet Academy in Nice. All classes have been welcome in the beautiful congress palace of Nice Acropolis and supported by Symantec Ltd, the world leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions, who decided to sponsor this memorable event.

Darren Thompson, CTO & Head of Enterprise Marketing EMEA of Symantec  opened the ceremony and explained to the students his meeting with Felix at the Academy of Barcelona one year before. From this discussion he remembered how Felix was encouraging children to take the responsibility for their future “because adults cannot be trusted”. He added: “This is a great opportunity for you, please learn the most of this academy and enjoy every activity of this wonderful day”.

We also had the great gift to have Cécilia and Jeanne as our French speaking ambassadors. They travelled from Munich just to explain the young Niçois why it was urgent to take care of our nature and how they could act to counter the global warming to prevent Nice from disappearing under the Mediterranean Sea as much as all the other countries on the globe.

Through questions, debates and game activities, the 55 students discovered how the global disparities were leading to the current “climate injustice”. Who has the biggest negative impact on the Earth? What to do to reduce it at its maximum and make sure everybody benefits of it?

Let’s express ourselves! We continued with an exciting rhetoric exercise. Everybody got the chance to learn how to speak in public in a clear and powerful way, how to remain positive and confident in every situation, how to give and receive advices from others. The best way to express back what Cécilia and Jeanne explained us!

The afternoon has been all about planting. While the eldest were participating to the symbolic plantation of an enormous and beautiful palm tree in the “Théâtre de Verdure” in front of the Mediterranean Sea, the youngest ones were patiently waiting for their late bus to bring them directly to the Mont Boron park and start planting themselves! We all gathered in Mont Boron and joined happily Marc and his team from the town hall of Nice to plant the 68 one year old Carob trees that they had carefully raised from the carob seeds of the park trees.

Every step of the plantation process has been explained so that every one of us could trustfully plant one’s own tree. Even Darren joined to the action!

Once done, we all went back to Nice Acropolis. The youngest had the time to come back earlier and think of what they could initiate a planting scheme, while the others will continue the action plan with their enthusiast and supportive teachers.

Each child received his/her certificate and book and left as fast as possible to be on time for the end of the school day. We all finished the day with tons of beautiful images and memories and the wish to go back to the Mont Boron park to check how the little Carob trees are growing!

A special thank you to Claudia van’t Hullenaar for organizing the event from Symantec side and for her dynamic support all day long. Our deep thanks to Sabrina Volle from the Tourism and Congress Office of Nice for her precious organization help, and a great thank you to the city Nice for its implication. We all wish to continue and complete this ‘greener city of France’ objective!

Please find more pictures from the Academy on Flickr