15. First Sustainability
Camp: a Success, John Platenius, Tofino Botanical Gardens
Foundation
The Tofino Botanical Gardens Foundation is pleased to announce
that its first Sustainability Camp was a resounding success. The
goal of Sustainability Camp is to increase youth knowledge and awareness
about global and local environmental issues, with the hope that
this increased awareness will help the next generation to develop
solutions and inspire action for positive environmental and social
change.
The Grade Six class from Tofino’s Wickaninnish Elementary
School participated in the first Sustainability Camp. The camp was
two nights, and a total of three full days. The camp was guided
by the six-day
Sustainability Camp curriculum developed by the Tofino Botanical
Gardens Foundation. The 60-page curriculum is free to use and implement,
and is located at the Camp’s website: www.SustainableKids.org.
This is the first camp of its kind, with a complete curriculum for
kids devoted to issues about how to create a sustainable future.
The Tofino Botanical Gardens Foundation raised enough money to
support the entire cost of this first camp for the students and
donated staff time and resources. The Foundation is grateful to
the Shell Environmental Fund and many community members and businesses
for their support: The Wickaninnish Community School, Anahata Yoga,
Fourth Street Market, Tofino Coop Hardware, Tofino Parks and Recreation
Department and the Raincoast Café.
The students spent the three days learning in the Tofino Botanical
Gardens’ natural settings – the gardens, the old growth
temperate rainforest and the mudflats – as well as two local
beaches. The kids and chaperones stayed and learned in the Clayoquot
Field Station, a new dormitory-classroom facility located in the
Gardens.
Camp Format
As part of Sustainability Camp, the students learned many different
aspects about how humans interact with the environment and how we
can improve these interactions to create a sustainable future.
The first module focused on how important community and effective
communication is to make change. These lessons were reinforced with
games in the gardens, the rainforest and the mudflats adjacent to
the Gardens.
In the next module, the students used the mudflats to visualize
the processes involved in making fossil fuels. Later in the Field
Station’s classroom, they learned how old these fuels are,
and why it is important to conserve these.
In the third module, students learned about energy conservation,
renewable energy and why it is important that we look to these energy
choices. This was a recurring theme throughout the Camp, which began
as a discussion and questioning period in the Clayoquot Field Station’s
classroom.
The fourth module took the kids out to a sandy beach with an excellent
rocky intertidal outcrop to learn the importance of biodiversity.
As students
interacted with tide pools, lessons about conserving biodiversity
for its own right, and how we rely on this diversity were reinforced.
During the fifth module, the students spent an afternoon at the
world-famous Long Beach focusing on pollution. A Parks Canada interpreter
began the afternoon session with a slideshow about marine pollution
and plastic
contaminants and then the students were sent out to the beach for
a “beach clean-up”. After an afternoon cleaning up the
beach, the students
categorized and graphed the pollution, reinforcing the scope of
the problem. The students’ were amazed that over 90% of the
garbage collected on the beach was a form of plastic – many
lessons before and after this module talked about how this plastic
was made from fossil fuels.
The last module circled back to the community module that was delivered
in the beginning of the camp. Key members of the community were
invited to answer questions that the students’ prepared. Community
members included a Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation’s council member
(Eli Enns), the town of Tofino’s mayor (John Fraser), the
president of the Tofino-Longbeach Chamber of Commerce (Larry Nicolay),
a local school board member (Sally Mole), the manager of the local
grocery store (Al Krukoff), and a local business person working
in Sustainable Industrial Design (Magnus Hanton).
A Few of the Questions to the Community Mr. Mayor: What do you
think is the best renewable energy solution for Tofino?
Mr. Enns: How are we going to respect our biodiversity at Long
Beach [Esowista Reserve] when we build our new houses?
Mr. Nicolay: How can the [Tofino-Longbeach] Chamber of Commerce
help create a beach clean-up day at Chesterman’s Beach?
Mr. Krukoff: Some stores have started only using paper and other
biodegradable bags. Would the [Tofino] Co-op Grocery and other stores
consider banning plastic bags too?
Ms. Mole: What are two ways we can save energy at our school?
For more information about Sustainability Camp, the Tofino Botanical
Gardens Foundation or the Clayoquot Field Station, visit www.tbgf.org.
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