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June 2008 E-news
March 2/3 Experience
By Caitlin Williscroft, a long-standing member of the YAC
La Marche 2/3 this year marked the 15th anniversary of the Ecole Vert Brundtland approach to environmental education in Quebec. A conference, entitled « carrefour de la citoyennete responsable » kick started the march. This year the theme of the conference was « Un mouvement, des racines, des ailes! » (A movement from roots to wings).
www.evb.csq.qc.net
The conference featured various presenters, including key note speaker Steven Guilbeault (founding member of Equiterre www.equiterre.org/en/). Steven set the atmosphere of the conference by stressing the importance of small initiatives and actions that contribute to the environmental movement. The conference featured various workshops that centered on two themes: how can we improve our practices to further engage youth and how to give ‘wings’ to our engagement.
Among all the workshops, one part featured two workshops showcasing youth driven and youth led projects. « Le parcours de l’engagement » features Quebec youth and their plans and successes thus far in the implementation of their social justice/environmental projects. Innovative projects ranged from converting old school desks into recycling bins, creating biking groups to encourage alternative transportation, an environmental fair to increase awareness of environmental issues, anti-idling campaigns, among many others! It was very inspiring to see and hear about all of the hard work and enthusiasm put into these projects!
The conference ended with two videos showcasing the future the EVB program. The EVB is hoping to spread its wings not only across the country but also to French-speaking regions of Africa. The success of EVB in Quebec is working with communities in Africa to start programs focusing around the four core values of EVB: democracy, peace, environment and solidarity. For more information on the EVB program, check out: www.sisp.qc.net
PS. If you’re wondering about the reoccurring wing theme—it’s because the EVB logo is a butterfly!
Dispatches from the Sustainable High Schools Project
The Sustainable High Schools Project (SHS) is a youth-driven initiative created to support high school communities in envisioning, assessing and improving their school’s level of sustainability. It is run in collaboration by the Sierra Club BC and the Sierra Youth Coalition, the youth branch of the Sierra Club.
Thank you to Emily Menzies for all the great work with this project, and for the dispatches from the schools involved with the SHS Project this year (check out their projects below).
The goal of the project is to equip students to lead their schools in a process of ongoing, transformative change: to go beyond carbon neutral and become models of innovation in sustainability.
Learn More!
Check out www.sustainablehighschools.ca today!
Stuff for You to Check Out
Request SHS class programs on Energy, Water, or Economy & Wealth and download resources such as the SHS Kit, a comprehensive guide to improving the social and ecological well being of your school at www.sustainablehighschools.ca.
A searchable online wiki has been launched by the Campus Climate Network to allow high schools, post-secondary institutions and community groups to document and share their school sustainability success stories. Create a page for your school today at www.campusclimatenetwork.org!
Check out our SHS film made at the BC Youth Action Gathering last year! www.reelyouth.ca/video/syc.mpg
Incredible Schools Doing Incredible Things
Here are some highlights from schools the SHS Project has worked with this past year.
Glenlyon Norfolk School – Reynolds Secondary School – Saint Michael’s University School – Kitsilano Secondary School – Gulf Islands Secondary – Pearson College – Esquimalt High School – Gladstone Secondary – Victoria High School
Glenlyon Norfolk School: created a Sustainability Advisory Committee and a student “G-Team” to look at energy issues in their school, and ran an awareness campaign about pollution and waste diversion and hosted the Change Conference in January 2008. This spring, they held an ambitious line-up of earth week events, a classroom action challenge that reduced over 12,000 kg of CO2 and 60,000 L of water, and a multi-stakeholder “world café” to create a sustainability charter and action plan so that their school can successfully model sustainability. They will be holding the annual international conference in October 2008, during which 15 SHS student leaders will co-facilitate sustainability visioning, asset mapping and action planning with 200 students.
Reynolds Secondary School: Created a “Green Group” as a partnership with post secondary students, Leadership Victoria, and Life Cycles Growing Schools program to re-create the school courtyard, garden and natural green space. They ran a waste diversion awareness campaign, a monthly e-waste and soft plastics recycling program and farmer market. They held a very successful “Cops for Cancer” fundraiser and a Buy Nothing Day clothing swap, donating clothes collected to a homeless shelter.
Saint Michael’s University School: They held a grad fashion show which featured a competition to put together the coolest recycled outfit, and are building a garden in partnership with Life Cycles’ Growing Schools program to provide organic produce for the cafeteria. The garden will be maintained by the environmental science class from the senior school and the middle school’s leadership class.
Kitsilano Secondary School: Calculated their school’s trends in green house gas emissions and energy consumption over the past ten years. The Environmental Club is working to build a Sustainability Advisory Committee that will include students from other clubs, and is currently running several innovative projects, such as selling “Basura Bags” to raise awareness and funds to create a better recycling system and greening their school courtyard. Kits student leaders attended the World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Flotilla this March and hosted a meeting of youth representatives of all Vancouver schools to advise the school board how best to support school sustainability initiatives across the district.
Gulf Islands Secondary: Students, staff and parents worked together to organize an “Environmental Action Day” during which all classes were cancelled, and instead the community was invited to join over 600 students in attending workshops and keynote presentations to deepen awareness and create plans for taking action. GISS also uses geothermal energy generated under the soccer field.
Pearson College: Has upgraded their fleet of bicycles and started designing a bio-diesel plant to convert fuel for the remaining vehicles. They replaced all shower heads with low flow models and the paper towels in the bathrooms are now composted. They renovated their cafeteria’s compost system, and they created partnerships with farmers to promote the purchase of local and organic produce. Pearson created a monthly time slot in the morning specifically for community building, celebration, and reflection.
Esquimalt High School: ESCAPE (Esquimalt Students who Care About Peace and Environment) assessment of their school led to their administration upgrading to low flow toilets to conserve water.
Gladstone Secondary: The GOOSSE club’s (Gladstone Organization Of Students for a Sustainable Environment) student leaders co-facilitated class presentations at new schools and one was selected to speak to the Premier and delegates at the provincial Climate Action Secretariat’s Youth Dialogue in April 2008!
Victoria High School: Has undertaken an exciting project to convert a truck to run on bio-diesel fuel!
The Heartland Institute – A Review
by David Gale (a long-standing member of our Youth Advisory Committee)
"Some environmentalists call for a "save-the-day" strategy to 'stop global warming,' saying it is better to be safe than sorry. Such a position seems logical until we stop to think: Immediate action wouldn't make us any safer, but it would surely make us poorer. And being poorer would make us less safe."
- The Heartland Institute’s Instant Expert Guide On Global Warming
When I was first called to write this article, I was called to write on The Heartland Institute and its supposed action plan to put anti-climate change programs in to schools. Previously, I had not heard of the institute and its preoccupations and was instantly curious as to what these exactly were. The well went dry on my search, however, as I was not able to find an article to inspire me on the topic and source an article from. One thing I did learn about though was the Institute as a whole and its overall big picture, and got a layman’s insight into what makes it tick. All in all, I ended up being surprised as to why I was not able to find a project plan or an article on the aforementioned school programs.
Joseph L. Bast, an acclaimed author and editor for a number of free-market oriented projects, conceived the Heartland Institute in 1984 with a little help from friends, foundations and corporations. Born then was a national nonprofit, nongovernmental research & education organization with strongly leaning libertarian free-market ideals – “free-market solutions to social and economic problems”, according to their website (www.heartland.org).
These free-market solutions sounded interesting. My curiosity was grabbed by the following. In 2007, the Heartland launched a website to promote their stance against global warming (www.globalwarmingheartland.com), and also launched a list of "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares”. At least 45 scientists eventually spoke up, appalled by the fact that they were listed as co-authors, and demanded that their names be withdrawn – apparently Heartland never contacted any of the scientists for permission. Heartland then said in return “We plan to make no further changes to the articles or to the lists” and “They have no right -- legally or ethically -- to demand that their names be removed from a bibliography composed by researchers with whom they disagree” (source: www.heartland.org). After that I learned, not surprisingly, that the Institute has had execs from big oil, big auto and big tobacco (Exxon Mobil, General Motors and Philip Morris, respectively) as members of its directorial board.
While I, on a personal level, am not a global warming skeptic, it is my intent for this article to be as unbiased as possible, as hard as that can be for me sometimes (and that shall be impossible with this article for me). Basically, I feel have to appeal to that sentimentality in me to give the Institute kudos somehow – give them a break. I feel for them, in a non-pity sense. The Heartland is honorable, in a way. It relentlessly defends its principles to the bone, and doing so it defends them in a solid, seemingly schooled way. Some could call that arrogant, but it is in a way honorable due to the amount of flak they must withstand in a single day. However, all in all it saddens me, and angers me a little too how they call themselves a non-profit organization and snuggle up to the trinity of western big industry. It also distresses me that, in all the articles I read, anyone who criticizes the Institute, publicly or not, is instantly dubbed as an alarmist or an extremist. It also strikes me as ironic that their Global Warming website does not convey that professional flair that their main website does, but rather shouts at you from the sidebars that “CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT A CRISIS!” – evoking even their own brand of alarmism. And as far as the honorable thing goes, I would say that not removing the dissenting scientists’ names from the list was a skip and a hop from honorable, on a grand, democratic societal scale. Again, I am surprised they haven’t taken this in to schools.
So what started out as a planned article turned into a grand, ranty foray into the foreign territory that is the Heartland Institute. All I can say is that I don’t regret it, I have learned an awful lot, and hopefully you, dear reader, at least knows what the Institute is now and that I have inspired you to research and read up on it – it deserves our attention. There are many other Heartland topics and issues on their website (www.heartland.org), including such fun ones as protecting smoker’s rights, school vouchers, and the deregulation of American health care insurance. Lots of good stuff to chew on, despite the fact that it might just give you a toothache. Happy trails!
Go Green or Go Home – McLurg’s Waste Reduction Program
In October 2007, McLurg High School in Wilkie, Saskatchewan, held a Waste Reduction & Garbage Sorting Day. The information gathered was used to create their “Go Green or Go Home” Project, with ideas that were then entered into the YBEX (Youth Business Excellence) Green Plan (North West Community Futures) competition – and they won! Congratulations!
The three areas they targeted in McLurg High School were:
- The amount of vehicles driven unnecessarily to school: Because the high school is in a small, rural community, a lot of the students who stay after school have to drive. The town students however do not need to drive every day. With a “no idling zone” they cut the amount of pollution down considerably.
- Recyclable paper: Any amount of paper that can be recycled would benefit everyone. Paper in the landfills takes a long time to break down and decompose completely.
- Recyclable bottles: When we throw out recyclable bottles, the school loses the refund that they would otherwise get. Even though on our garbage sorting day we only had $2.60 worth of recyclables thrown away, that adds up to $468.00 per school year.
A bulletin board display in the school was designed to raise awareness about theses areas.
So What Changes Were Made?
When students were working in the main common area of the school, they had no place for excess paper except for the garbage can. The school will be adding paper recycle bins beside each garbage container. This should increase the amount of paper that will be recycled after each day.
To help ensure that the recyclable bottles such as pop cans, plastic bottles, glass bottles and juice boxes end up in the recycle bins they labeled the recycle bins. Large and easy-to-read labels were placed on all containers so that the recyclables ended up in their perspective containers. The school will also be moving the bottle recycling cans to beside the garbage cans for convenience.
To raise awareness about the amount of unnecessary driving our students do, they will be doing a newsletter awareness campaign. They also conducted a survey using www.surveymonkey.com to find out the students opinions about recycling and waste reduction. They especially want to target the students that are driving just to drive - if the weather is nice they can walk or ride a bike.
Windsor Secondary Climate Change Photojournalism
Windsor Secondary School in North Vancouver got involved with the Sustainable High Schools (SHS) Project in B.C. (read more about the SHS Project above), and created a series of incredible Climate Change photojournalism articles to bring awareness to their school. Their teacher, Lorna Menzies, brought in the SHS Project to work on energy programs in their school.
The Articles They Wrote
What We Do With Our Trash: Showing that more than half of our waste goes to landfills, instead of being reused and recycled.
Turn Off the Lights: “A light wastes about 98% of the energy it uses.”
Celebrating Our Trees: “Here at Windsor Secondary we are extremely lucky to be surrounded by many beautiful trees… It is important for us to appreciate not only the beauty of the trees but also their contributions in fighting against global warming.”
Starting a Compost: Because 30-50% of garbage is organic – such as food scraps, garden waste, and soiled non-recycled paper – keeping this organic material out of landfills reduces environmental risks, turns waste into valuable resources, and conserves space in landfills.
Summer Stuff
Sustainable Living Leadership Program
What? 3 week river rafting trip focusing on sustainable living, community stewardship and leadership training with the Rivershed Society of BC.
When? August 1 – 23
Details please!
This years' trip, which will take 12 youth leaders on a 3-week 'trip of a lifetime' down the Fraser River, begins at Mount Robson August 1st and ends in Vancouver August 23rd. The program focuses on sustainable living, community stewardship and leadership training.
The RSBC offers up to twelve $5,000 scholarships for successful applicants. Successful applicants would only be responsible for the $1,000 registration fee. To determine if you are eligible for a scholarship, please call Fin Donnelly at 604-941-5937 or fin@rivershed.com before applying.
Application forms can be downloaded from the website www.rivershed.com. Please note: the registration deadline has been extended to Friday, June 6th. All applications must be received by then.
SYC’s Youth Action Gatherings
What? Youth-led gatherings for school sustainability and climate action in B.C. and Ottawa.
When? Summer 2008
Details please!
During the summer 2008, 30 youth will camp out for a week at SYC’s Youth Action Gatherings in BC and Ottawa. You are invited to join us to build awareness, leadership skills and a community of youth working for school sustainability and climate action! SYC is co-hosting this BC youth training summit with the Campus Climate Network and its partners.
Download [www.campusclimatenetwork.org/
wiki/Youth_Action_Gatherings] and return the YAG application form today to secure your spot! You can also download a PDF of the application form by clicking here.
Future of Water Summer Workshop
What? A two and a half day residential workshop that engages Canadian youth in dialogue around current water issues in British Columbia.
When? July 4th – 6th on Vancouver Island.
Details please!
A lot of this workshop will focus on the theme Whole System-Whole City Change: A Watercentric View of Sustainability, and will be especially using urban water issues in Victoria to develop this theme.The goal of this workshop is to develop future leaders in water resource management and related fields. Sound like it’s made for you? Then get involved!
How to Register
There’s space for 20 youth from the ages of 20-35 to register. For the workshops, they are looking for applicants representing the public, private, academic and NGO sectors. It only costs $40 for the entire workshop (and that includes your workshops, meals and accommodations).
If you are interested in participating in the workshop, please submit a one-page application letter describing your interest in attending the workshop. A CV may be included but is not required.
• In your application letter, please highlight:
why you are interested in learning about urban
water issues; what potential you see in inter-sectoral dialogue; and what background you will bring to the discussion.
Submit your application to Susanne Porter-Bopp, Waterlution Associate at water@polisproject.org.
More Info Please!
Check out their brochure for more information including workshop agendas, participation costs and registration info. Click here to download the brochure.
Otesha Cycling Performing Tours
The Otesha Project launches 2008 cycling performing tours
The Otesha Project has announced the routes for the 2008 Otesha Cycling and Performing Tours. Applications are now being accepted for seven regional tours throughout Canada that will take more than 120 inspiring young change-makers on the journey of a lifetime. You could be one of them!
Tour members will share an incredible experience as they live as a mobile and sustainable community for two months. They will cycle from performance to performance, braving the elements, connecting with communities along the route, and exploring all the ups and downs of addressing environmental and social injustices through their own every day actions.
Tours will start in May, July, and September, departing from Ottawa, Vancouver, and Halifax.
Apply now!
More information available at www.otesha.ca.
Spread the word! Spread the hope!
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