Spring 2011 Recipients
Adults in Motion
Garden River ON
www.education.gardenriver.ca
Project: Community Garden Enhancement with a Focus on Community Participation
The Community Garden Enhancement project will connect youth to nature and the environment. Elders and other knowledgeable gardeners will work with youth to grow and harvest food and medicinal plants both traditionally and through gardening. Youth will upgrade and maintain the existing community garden and build a greenhouse to extend the growing season.
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Altona Forest Public School
Pickering ON
altona.ddsbschools.ca
Project: Altona Forest Public School Greening Project
The outdoor classroom will provide the school and surrounding community with a natural space to learn about the environment and biological sciences. The main classroom will have two openings and 12 seating rocks. Eight deciduous trees will be planted in locations to produce optimum shade for students and the existing sandpits. There will a second small classroom with six seating rocks and two deciduous trees. The outdoor learning space will provide a fun and engaging space for all grades to learn about the environment.
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Conservation Halton Foundation
Burlington ON
www.conservationhaltonfoundation.ca
Project: Back from the Brink: the Mountsberg Shrike Recovery Project
The objective of the Mountsberg Shrike Recovery Project is to help bring the endangered Eastern Loggerhead Shrike back from the edge of extinction in Canada. The Conservation Halton Foundation will build a captive breeding facility specially designed to house and breed shrikes. Captive-bred Eastern Loggerhead Shrike hatchlings will be released into the wild to help stabilize the wild population. The Mountsberg Conservation Area’s successful Species at Risk program will educate the public about this important initiative.
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Credit Valley Conservation Foundation
Mississauga ON
www.creditvalleyca.ca
Project: Portico Community Demonstrative Rain Garden
Credit Valley Conservation, in partnership with Portico Community Church, will develop a demonstrative rain garden that will filter 70% of all the storm water runoff from the church’s two hectare parking lot. The rain garden will: efficiently reduce urbanization impacts on water; reduce storm water runoff, and; improve water quality, biodiversity and habitat. The rain garden will be the first of its kind in the Credit River Watershed and will educate the public on the need to adopt sustainable storm water management practices.
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Ecole Elementaire L’Envolée
Windsor ON
www.csviamonde.ca
Project: Respect, Renew, Reinvest in our Future
Ecole Elementaire L’Envolée’s outdoor classroom will provide environmental education, active play opportunities, shade and sanctuary for students. The classroom will include large shade-producing trees, boulders for students to sit on, a gazebo with benches, a butterfly garden, a vegetable garden and shrubs. The project will create an outdoor education area for students to learn to respect and appreciate the environment, in a natural, calm, protective and healthy learning space.
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The Friends of Pinery Park
Grand Bend ON
www.pinerypark.on.ca
Project: Rolling Boardwalk Construction for Dune Preservation
The Friends of Pinery Park will construct rolling boardwalks over unprotected dune pathways. There are few remaining dune ecosystems in Ontario. It is important to sustain and protect the dunes and the protective vegetation from human impact and erosion. There are many rare plants that depend on the sand dunes and their extreme climate to thrive. Educational signage and interpretive programming will educate the community. During the fall and winter boardwalks will be rolled up to allow the underlying dunes to naturally ebb and flow under normal dynamic fluctuations.
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Greenest City Environmental
Toronto ON
www.greenestcity.ca
Project: Greenest City’s Garden for Learning
Greenest City Environmental will expand and enhance the space in the existing Youth Garden in Dunn Parkette for programming and educational initiatives for young people aged three to 25 including the growing number of Greenest City participants with mental and physical disabilities. The garden will include: an environmental learning node; raised beds designed for children and people with limited mobility; woodland plantings under existing canopy trees; an improved organic vegetable planting area, and; native plant beds to increase wildlife habitat and create a natural windbreak for the garden.
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Hamilton Naturalists’ Club
Hamilton ON
www.headofthelakelandtrust.org
Project: One School + Native Plants = Restored Field
The Hamilton Naturalists’ Club will engage a school in Hamilton’s urban core to restore an abandoned field to native savannah at their Amaolo Nature Sanctuary. Students in grades 3 to 6 will first visit the nature sanctuary to learn about and understand the importance of the restoration initiative. Students will then raise native plants from seed in their classrooms and transplant them to the restoration site. During the project students will log the growth of seedlings, record their experiences, and make individual commitments to take action to protect nature.
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Oakvillegreen Conservation Association
Jordan Station ON
http://www.oakvillegreen.org
Project: Growing the Urban Forest
The Growing the Urban Forest project will tackle the issue of maintaining and enhancing the urban forest through a multi-faceted approach includes: planting more than 600 native trees and shrubs; collecting tree seed from identified local native trees of importance; having seedlings grown by Foster Tree Parents; connecting the community to the forest through urban forest tours, and; generating interest in native trees by finding homes for 50 seedlings of Oakville’s 260-year-old Great White Oak. The project will also deliver environmental education programs to community groups and at least 12 schools.
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PACT Urban Peace Program
Toronto ON
www.pactprogram.ca
Project: Grow to Learn: Scaling Up Sustainable Urban Agriculture
PACT Grow to Learn is an after-school and summer youth initiative focused on leadership, job and life skills training, educational and employment opportunities and solutions to the root causes of poverty and crime. Grow to Learn is an urban food initiative that creates large, vibrant schoolyard gardens in high-needs communities. In 2011, PACT will establish a new garden space that will be a model garden for large-scale organic food production on school grounds. The 2011 program will also include a “Bee Aware” campaign and pollinator stewardship program at two garden locations.
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Pape Avenue Public School / Pape Children’s House Daycare
Toronto ON
www.tdsb.on.ca
Project: Pape’s Outdoor Classroom: Creating a safe and stimulating outdoor learning environment
Pape Avenue Public School will transform an underused area of the schoolyard into a vibrant outdoor classroom to accommodate the needs of the expanding kindergarten program. The outdoor learning space will serve the entire school community and integrated daycare. The project will feature: a food garden using raised beds; a native wildflower garden; a butterfly garden; a story circle for teachers and community members; and a natural play area of gardens, pathways and sand.
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Pope John Paul II School
Barrie ON
www.smcdsb.on.ca/pjp
Project: Schoolyard Naturalization and Outdoor Classroom
The goal of the schoolyard naturalization project is to reintroduce native plant species to the schoolyard and to the larger community. The school is located in a developing area with little of the original forest and grasslands remaining. Project plans include: developing naturalized areas in the schoolyard; constructing an outdoor classroom with raised planter beds that will include: a sensory garden of herbs; the planting of native deciduous and coniferous trees; native meadow and swale plantings. The outdoor classroom will be used to teach the Ontario curriculum in all grades. This project will grow and mature over several seasons.
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Protect Our Water and Environmental Resources
Georgetown ON
www.powerhalton.ca
Project: The Hills are Alive with Biodiversity
The Hills are Alive with Biodiversity project will engage 800 youth in planting 3,200 native plant species in Halton. The project celebrates the International Year of the Forest and launches the International Decade of Biodiversity with schools in Halton. Students will participate in restoration and outdoor curriculum-linked biodiversity education. Five acres of land will be restored, and students will have hands on experiences that underscore the need to stop the loss of biodiversity and the value and importance of taking an active role in preserving the environment.
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ReForest London
London ON
www.reforestlondon.ca
Project: Schoolyard Greening and Learning
ReForest London will teach London area students about trees and will plant outdoor classrooms in 12 schools. The program will result in 60 native trees and 180 native shrubs being planted with the help of 3,600 students. The organization will develop an educational package for each school with 20 tree-related lesson plans appropriate to the Ontario curriculum in science, math and literature. Lesson plans will also be available online for use by other schools.
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ReThink Green
Sudbury ON
www.rethinkgreen.ca
Project: Rethink Events
Rethink Green will pilot a new program for Sudbury area festivals, events, meeting organizers and facilities to reduce their environmental impact. The program will promote energy conservation, water conservation, and waste reduction and diversion during events and at facilities. A resource guide and calculator tool will be developed for Sudbury and a provincially relevant guide will be produced once the program has been well established. The program will provide practical and science-based facilitation services (resource materials and one-on-one advisory services) and educational seminars.
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Roden Public School / Equinox Holistic Alternative School
Toronto ON
www.wholechildschool.ca
Project: RPS and EHAS Grounds Enhancement: Community garden and green space development
The Community Garden and Green Space Development project has two components. As part of the curriculum, the school will develop three gardens. One will be a fruit and vegetable garden that will allow students to learn how to plant, tend and harvest their own garden; the second, a pollinator garden; and finally, a native species garden will be developed in conjunction with students. The second component of the project is an exterior mural for the main entrances of both schools.
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Shoresh Jewish Environmental Programs
Toronto ON
www.shoresh.ca
Project: Kavanah Garden Nature Trail
Shoresh Jewish Environmental Programs will develop an unmaintained pathway that weaves through a ravine into an educational programming space. The trail will teach the community about the Don River Watershed, and the plants and animals native to the ravine ecosystem. The nature trail will feature educational signage and activity stations to demonstrate how watersheds work, how development can shape and affect the watershed, and what actions community members can take to ensure the health and sustainability of the watershed and local natural spaces. The hands-on educational stations will be linked to the Ontario curriculum.
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Toronto Wildlife Centre
Toronto ON
www.torontowildlifecentre.com
Project: At-Risk Turtle Recovery Program
The At-Risk Turtle Recovery Program will help sick and injured turtles through medical treatment and rehabilitation, and raise awareness about turtle issues through the Toronto Wildlife Centre website, the media and through networking initiatives with other groups involved in turtle conservation. Displaced eggs are also admitted to the centre for incubation and healthy hatchlings are later released into the wild. Education about turtles is crucial to their survival; seven of eight Ontario turtle species are now at-risk.
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