Barra Children’s Centre received a £250 Biodiversity Award from Scottish Natural Heritage through the CSV Action Earth 2008 campaign.

Our project aimed to restore the island’s previously rich biodiversity by providing a habitat for butterflies, insects and birds and to educate children at a young age about biodiversity, its beauty and importance. To achieve this we planned to plant nectar rich flowers and plants and an edible hedge in the community garden. We planned to involve children from the pre-school groups within the centre as well as the local OFTTI group.

The children enjoyed helping out and learning about what they were planting and why. They will be able to enjoy spotting the different types of wildlife in the garden that we attract and use the fruit that they planted for their snack. Our local MP, Angus Brendan MacNeil, came along to show his support and join in with the planting.

The Thistle Café provided refreshments on the last day of the project which were very welcome.

We would like to thank SNH, CSV Action Earth, the OFTTI Project for all their hard work and advice, Nicholson Builders for their continued support, the Thistle Café and all the volunteers who came along and helped out over the week.

We set out to improve the uptake and learning of Gaelic in the children and parents of the Barra and Vatersay communities.

To achieve this, we planned to provide a Gaelic Parent and Toddler Group from 12-2pm, 3 days a week for a period of 12 weeks.  The group was to be run by a play leader who would give parents an opportunity to observe their children using and learning Gaelic and give them a chance to learn some Gaelic themselves.

The project proved to be very popular with 11 children and their parents attending regularly and 6 others coming along occasionally.  Some of these children were already in Croileagan, the Gaelic nursery, while others were considering a Gaelic education.  There was a mixture of levels of fluency, from basic learners to fluent speakers.  We conducted a telephone survey to gain people’s opinions on the project and the results are included.  All found the group worthwhile and would like to see it continue.  Everybody we questioned was now using more Gaelic as a result of the group.

We have identified that the in the whole the group was a success with every user questioned wanting the group to continue.  The song time and story telling proved very popular with parents and children, providing an opportunity for parents and children to interact in Gaelic.  The main suggestions raised were to perhaps split the age groups as some found the younger children were not gaining as much as the older ones, to change the time as it did not suit everybody and to use a bigger room.  These suggestions will all be taken into consideration when planning for the future projects.