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Ooberfuse inspire Greenwich students to act on climate change


Ooberfuse in concert

Ooberfuse in concert

Critically acclaimed electric pop duo Ooberfuse have held a workshop for pupils at St Ursula’s Convent school, Greenwich, to encourage them to think about the importance of renewable energy.

The duo, who live in Woolwich, ran four sessions for students in Year Eight and Nine. Pupils began by learning about Power to Be, the aid agency CAFOD’s latest campaign on the importance of renewable energy for the world’s poorest communities. Ooberfuse then held a song writing workshop where students were encouraged to write their own lyrics on the importance of clean energy.

To finish the day Ooberfuse performed for an hour, during which students were invited to sing and showcase their work. The school hall may have been a contrast to the Ministry of Sound and the O2, where Ooberfuse have previously performed, but pupils and band alike had a fantastic time.

Hal St John and Cherrie Anderson formed Ooberfuse in 2010 and in just a few years their quirky and upbeat songs have been lauded by Boy George, The Guardian and BBC 6’s Tom Robinson. Their music has taken them all over the world, from Madrid, where they played for two million young Catholics on World Youth Day, to Iraq, where they played at a refugee camp in Erbil. Social justice and inequality are strong themes in their music; they have written songs in aid of survivors of Typhoon Haiyan, for persecuted Christians in Iraq and Pakistan, and are soon to release a song on the plight of refugees.

It is this use of music to promote social justice, as well as their Catholic faith, which motivated them to get involved with CAFOD’s work and subsequently run the workshop at St. Ursula’s.

Hal said: “Today went well and we really enjoyed it – it is always a tall order to make scientific problems attractive to a young audience as usually their minds are anywhere else but it helped that we focused it around things that they already knew about. The real test was when they were writing their own lyrics but when they read them back and they were such powerful lyrics, it was great to see.”

Cherrie Anderson, who is originally from the Philippines, said: “Climate change was just an idea but when Typhoon Haiyan hit my hometown it became so real. That is when we decided to devote our music to social justice and raising awareness about important issues. After the typhoon CAFOD were one of the first aid agencies on the ground responding to the need, so it’s great to be involved with them now.”

CAFOD’s Power to Be campaign encourages communities to lobby the World Bank, the global organisation which the UK partners with to fight worldwide poverty, to invest in local, renewable energy. Through the World Bank, the UK already invests in energy access to combat poverty but less than 3% of this spending goes towards renewable energy.

Through Power to Be, CAFOD is asking the UK’s representative at the World Bank, Melanie Robinson, to use her influence to ensure that children everywhere have the power to achieve great things and lift themselves out of poverty, without harming the planet.
Susan Elderfield, the Chaplain at St Ursula’s, said: “I don’t think we should forget the message of today; how we should look after the planet. Each one of us has a responsibility – from switching off the lights to getting involved with NGOs to becoming politicians. It’s our planet and our job to look after it.”

Year 8 pupil Saumu, who attended the workshop, said: “People in places like Kenya are suffering because they do not have access to electricity. Around the world, one in six people don’t have electricity; that’s equal to 1.2 billion people and we should do something about it.”

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For more information about Ooberfuse see: https://ooberfuse.com/home

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