Vision

Our action project (submitted to Learning for a Sustainable Future and Our Canada Project) is called Building Connection, Inspiring Action. We used our ingenuity and resourcefulness to not only create a plan for an outdoor learning space at our school, but we also added city-level elements to our action plan in order to connect with nature beyond our school grounds and to inspire changes at the city level through our letter campaign that aimed to ensure that Ottawa is sustainable. Our mission for our letter writing campaign was to advocate for the ability of Ottawa students to access Ottawa’s waste management facilities and water treatment plants for first-hand, on-site education about these important services.

Action

SCHOOL CONNECTION AND ACTION: Creating an outdoor classroom was a fundamental need at our school in order to build students’ connections with nature. We worked with our school principal who connected with our parent council. Together, this element of our action plan was able to come together. Our budget was spent to create this learning greenspace that was planned with pollinators and native species in mind.

CITY CONNECTION: We learned about the benefits of active transportation for the second component of our sustainability action plan. Together, we cycled 23.5KM of Ottawa’s NCC Trails. Many of the historic and geographically significant sites we explored directly connected to our curriculum learning and complemented our environmental education. We visited Hog’s Back Falls and Locks, Dow’s Lake and the Tulip Festival, the Rideau Canal and Locks, the Bytown Museum, and Lansdowne Park. Our cycling field trip was fun, active, cost-effective, and didn’t require a bus.

CITY ACTION: The final part of our action plan consisted of a letter writing campaign. Our campaign’s mission was to advocate for the ability of Ottawa students to access Ottawa’s waste management facilities and wastewater treatment plants for first-hand, on-site education about these important services.

Reflection & Celebration

CONCLUSION: Through our broad thinking and cost-effective ideas, our class was able to: network with our school leader and parent council in order to collaborate on an outdoor learning space, to connect with our city through a cycling field trip, and to plant seeds of change through our letter writing campaign that reached out to 30 community leaders and service providers. The numerous connections that we have fostered and the exact impacts of our actions are unquantifiable, but our sustainability action plan for school and city has provided the opportunity for over 450 students to connect with and spend time in nature, and our letter writing campaign may have a ripple effect that leads to city leaders looking at offering Ottawa students some authentic, onsite learning about waste management and water treatment.

Thank you to Learning for a Sustainable Future and Our Canada Project for supporting students with our actions for sustainability.

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