Vision

We wanted to recognize the week leading up to Earth Week with a series of workshops and awareness events for our students. We wanted to show our students and staff some easy and accessible ways to make change to be more sustainable in their day-to-day lives Our school’s sustainability group came up with themes for each day and we ended the week with an incredibly memorable field trip/workshop for our committee members.

Action

During the week of April 17-21, leading up to Earth Day on April 22 (on a Saturday this year), we hosted the following theme days/workshops in which all students/staff in our school could participate. All workshops took place over the lunch hour.
Monday, April 17 – Mending Monday: We hosted a local business Reclaim Mending at our school for a 1 hour workshop. They talked about Fashion Revolution Week (April 22-28), the unsustainable fashion industry and then taught us a a few simple sewing techniques – threading a needle, running stitch, and sewing on buttons. Students then had some time to mend some damaged clothing they brought with them.
Tuesday, April 18 – Sustainable Snacks: As a Fair Trade School, we focused on fair trade products. We distributed fair trade chocolate, bananas and coffee, and made chocolate chip banana muffins and cookies using fair trade sugar, bananas, cocoa and chocolate chips.
Wednesday, April 19 – T-Shirt Totes: Students turned old T-shirts into reusable grocery tote bags.
Thursday, April 20 – Swap Shop: Students and Staff brought items they didn’t want/need/use such as clothes, books, movies, craft supplies and swap tables were set up in the hallway. Students could leave what they didn’t want and take home something they did! It was a huge success and we are hoping to have an on-going sway cupboard available throughout the year.
Friday, April 21 – Fresh Air Friday: Students and Staff were encourages to get outside for lunch on Friday. The sustainability group attended a workshop at the warehouse/gallery/textile waste exhibit of local designer Lennard Taylor. It was amazing! We went through his gallery of art created with discarded clothing while learning about sustainable and fast fashion and we ended the day with an inspiring workshop about recreating our own clothing to keep it out of the landfill.

Reflection & Celebration

We had a very successful week and ended being completely inspired by Lennard Taylor to continue learning about sustianable fashion and leading more workshops back at school on the topic.