Ice Edge and other stuff...

Thanks to Ollie for ponting out ICE EDGE.

Update: actually it was Tony (see comments)

This is a competition, which offers the chance of a trip to Svalbard.
There is a lot of useful information on the site.

Here is a video of Ben Saunders, who is also an honorary Vice President of the Geographical Association, and I hope to catch his session at the conference in April this year.



This is from the press release for the site...
Forty young people from across the UK are to win the journey of a lifetime into the fragile Arctic in a nationwide schools competition run by Edge, the educational foundation which campaigns for vocational and practical learning. Thousands of young people from across the nation are expected to compete in Ice Edge by coming up with ideas for practical solutions for environmental problems to better preserve our planet.

Winners of the competition will travel to the Arctic in June 2007, where they will meet scientists, explorers and local people in this vulnerable and extreme environment. The competition was launched on Thursday 26 October at 6pm at Edge’s London offices. To celebrate the launch, young people who took part in previous Edge projects joined Edge for an evening of exploration to hear from experts, including explorer Ben Saunders who has walked to the North Pole and worked in the Arctic environment that the winning group will be visiting.

Ice Edge will demonstrate to young people the ever-increasing importance of vocational careers to our environment. The way we use water, electricity and fossil fuels will be influenced by those who really understand water systems, electricity and the way in which vehicles work, amongst many other factors, and those in vocational careers will be the people who are actually doing something about the environment through their every-day work, rather than just talking about what could be done. They will be installing and connecting, for example, solar panels, systems that use less water in houses and adapting or maintaining current and new types of vehicles so that emissions are reduced to a minimum.

Ice Edge will start young people thinking about practical solutions to reduce damage to our world, and help them understand how this will add to the excitement of vocational careers that they might consider following in the future. Going to the Arctic, as a fabulous goal for all entrants, will bring to life just what a delicate balance currently exists between a world where we can enjoy our environment, and one in which we will soon start to see undeniable signs that we are destroying it.

Just caught the new Sonia Bravia ad. Remember the bouncing balls ? Well now they've got paint exploding all over a housing estate.