Vision

Our vision for Canada is to have our leaders, community, school peers and staff increase their awareness of how to be sustainable and pit it into action to make real measurable change. There are a lot of mixed messages out in the ethos about the environment and sustainability. Our goal is to help create a variety of initiatives to help clear the air (no pun intended) of confusion about how to be sustainable and promote some easily doable activities that our school, our division and our community can easily and regularly partake in with excitement.

Action

We spent the $200 to create Grant Park Green Team hoodies and Plant-in-a-Bag Kits (daisies and tomatoes) for sale to raise money in order to help support our team and our school’s social justice club who are currently also passionate and focused on environmental issues and sustainability awareness. The funds we raised will go towards the initiatives we all have for sustainability awareness at Grant Park High School. These include:

1. Assembly – This is an assembly that will discuss how to change passion and social media activism into real change. We will speak on an overview of the events put on by SFSJ and Green Team and give an explanation for all of them. We will also possibly feature a guest speaker who works closely with the climate strike group who will promote the May 24 strike which we are getting permission slips for. This would cost max $50 for an honorarium for a possible speaker we bring in.

2. Pledge Campaign – The pledge campaign will be a social media campaign that encourages students to pledge to make a change for an entire month. these changes will be varied from small changes to large changes and will be brainstormed by Students for Social Justice and the Grant Park Green Team. There are no costs associated with this idea.

3. Lights – Similar to earth day, we want to speak to admin and custodial staff about turning off more of the lights more often. Students reported that they liked the way it was done on earth day and that it did not interfere with their learning. There are no costs associated with this idea’. However, through this entire initiative, we now have the Winnipeg School Division seriously looking into upgrading all the fluorescent lights to LED bulbs saving Grant Park High School approximately $9000 in annual electricity costs.

4. Volunteer Info-graphic – This would be a printed info-graphic put together by SFSJ and Green Team which lists info and contacts at multiple Winnipeg green organizations who are looking for volunteers so we can connect students to opportunities. The only costs associated with this is printing costs so probably not more than $20

5. Paper Recycling – This is a simple change that lots of students and staff have requested which is the implementation of paper recycling bins in the hallways, alongside the drink recycling bins. Not sure if these cost less when ordered through the division, but this would probably cost around $60 to cover three or four bins in the main hallways

6. The rest of the funds will go towards a recycling educational booth that Green Team has envisioned since people are still very much confused about what is and is not recyclable. It is our hopes that it will make recycling more efficient throughout the school and beyond.

7. We plan on purchasing materials to begin a school wide vermicomposting system during the 2019/2020 school year.

Reflection & Celebration

We have accomplished an amazing team of kids who developed our logo and created a variety of sustainable products to sell and promote sustainability through many interactions with students, staff and our community. With the profits, we have been able to help support and collaborate with other school clubs and community commercial enterprises to further our goal of sustainability awareness and change. There will be a lot to update in the near future.