Category: Announcement

The Dr. Wriggles Annual Update

January 8, 2024

The Compost Education Centre connects with and positively impacts children and youth in our region. A recent study published by the Capital Regional District reports that 56% of grade 7-12 youth in the region don’t feel connected to land and nature. This disconnect is representative of how many children and youth of all ages feel. Elora Adamson, the Child and Youth Education Program Manager, and Jeffrey Ellom, the Child and Youth Education Program Coordinator, address this disconnect by providing accessible and inclusive education.

Over the past year, Elora and Jeffrey have delivered 286 in-person educational workshops featuring soil science, food waste reduction and diversion, resource conservation, and composting to 4552 students and 789 adults. Elora and Jeffrey create and deliver workshop content that’s tied into British Columbia’s provincial science and social studies curriculum on topics including energy transfer, organism life cycles, chemical and physical changes, and sustainable practices. At the same time, Elora and Jeffrey connect students to the natural processes in their own neighborhoods rather than educating about nature in the abstract. To best help students engage with big ideas like climate change, our programs are regionally specific, solution-driven, and hands-on.

One workshop participant shared that “staff and children greatly enjoyed this workshop. They enjoyed the puppets and the storytelling. Many of the children were telling their parents about what they learned when they arrived at a pick up time. Even a week later, some of the children are still talking about how pollinators are helping our gardens.”

Elora and Jeffrey build and maintain relationships with teachers, administrators, and education organizations throughout the CRD. To ensure cost is never a barrier, we offer free or discounted workshops to under-resourced classrooms. We have also had success adapting workshops to a variety of student access needs whether physical, behavioral, social, linguistic, or developmental. We also email teachers after workshops to invite feedback. To maintain accessibility to underserved rural communities, we bring workshops to any location in the CRD at no additional travel cost. Our aim is to reduce as many barriers to engaging and nature-based education as possible.

We are able to provide this low-barrier education with the support of donors and funders. We are grateful to the Rotary Club of Victoria for supporting our 2024 children and youth educational programming.

Claire Remington, Executive Director

Do you love Dr. Wriggles, too? Become a member today to continue supporting our programming in 2024 and beyond!

Let’s Make It Rot – Together

January 1, 2024

The Compost Education Centre launched Let It Rot! (LIR) in collaboration with a group of students at SJ Burnside Alternative Secondary School (SJ Burnside). LIR is an experiential learning program through which high school-aged youth acquire skills and knowledge on topics including composting, waste reduction, soil science, permaculture, and ecological stewardship. Now in its third year of operation, Elora Adamson, the CEC’s Child and Youth Education Program Manager, delivers lessons weekly to two cohorts of students at SJ Burnside and Mount Douglas Secondary School (Mount Doug).

We had launched the program because we had received feedback from student learners and teachers that teens need longer periods of time and relationship-building to more fulsomely connect with the resources that the Compost Ed Centre offers. We heard that students want to get their hands dirty, apply knowledge and skills in a tangible way, and build community around the intersection of food and climate justice. I’ve been so excited to see how Elora manages this program in a way that has had rippling effects. For example, upon graduating from SJ Burnside, an LIR alumni immediately found employment in the food security and food waste sector, which she was inspired to seek out after her experience in the program.

It is clear that LIR has deep impact on the participant students and their communities. Earlier this year, we started to wonder about all the other student communities at the nine other secondary schools in School District 61. How can we scale up our engagement of youth in gardening, composting, and conservation activities in educational gardens? Educational gardens are powerful outdoor learning environments for fostering climate action. How can we effect more climate change mitigation and adaptation by growing our Let It Rot! community?

To answer these questions, we started talking to longstanding food security organizations like CRFAIR, exciting new initiatives like Flourish School Food Society, long-time friends like Lifecycles, passionate teachers like Annalee Tyler at Reynolds Secondary School, and progressive funders like the Victoria Foundation. What we found is that we all care about transforming disconnected youth into engaged stewards of our world – and that there is an opportunity to progress towards greater collaboration and integration. By aligning our program delivery and participating in ongoing strategic discussions, we can focus more on impact and less on duplicating efforts with regards to funding, community focus, and capacity.

With the generous support of the Victoria Foundation, we’ve started exploring these questions and implementing strong collaborative practices. The latest (and so exciting!) update is that the Compost Ed Centre and Flourish have co-hired a garden coordinator to manage multiple school garden spaces. It’s exciting to think that we’ve managed to avoid some redundant administrative work and pool resources together to create a new job in the food literacy sector.

We aspire to connect students first to local natural processes and then second to big ideas like climate change. By demonstrating hands-on, regionally specific, and solution-driven practices through our educational approach, we try to reconnect youth to land and nature in a meaningful and productive way. By educating youth about the importance of sustainable agricultural systems, the science of compost, the benefits of native plants, and the importance of waste reduction and conservation, we are equipping them with the skills and knowledge needed to build healthy communities with resilient local food systems.

We are so grateful to find ourselves in community with a growing number passionate student learners, dedicated teachers, and nimble organizations. We’re looking forward to even more!

By Claire Remington, Executive Director

Kayla Siefried, a finalist for Charity Village Award

December 6, 2023

Our Site Manager and Community Education Coordinator, Kayla Siefried was a top finalist for the Charity Village awards, in the category of Most Outstanding Individual Impact. 

As an expert educator and ground leader, Kayla teaches others to do as she says and what she does. In her time at the CEC she has taught 946 workshops to 16,127 childen, youth, and adults on topics related to composting, food preservation, and gardening.

When asked to describe his experience learning from Kyla, a former workshop attendee wrote:

“For the past two years, Kayla has been my invaluable gardening mentor, guiding me through this journey with unwavering expertise and passion. Her exceptional communication skills have not only helped me immensely but have also benefited our entire class. I owe her a profound debt of gratitude, as there’s no one I’ve learned more from about gardening than her.”

We are grateful to have Kayla on staff at the Compost Education Centre.

By Zoe-Blue Coates, Office Manager and Communications Coordinator

Strategic Planning Updates

December 1, 2023

I joined the Compost Ed Centre as Executive Director in February 2023, and I’m constantly learning about who we are and what we do. Let me begin by saying that I am so grateful to work with Elora, Jeffrey, Kayla, and Zoe-Blue. Earlier this year in anticipation of our strategic planning, we sent out a survey to gather data from our community as to what they view as the Compost Ed Centre’s strengths and what they might want us to do differently in the next three to five years. Consistently, the responses highlighted knowledgeable, engaging, and passionate staff as our core strength. And for the future? For us to keep doing what we have been doing – and possibly some expansion!? The responses highlighted for me how well-established and well-loved the Compost Ed Centre is after 30 years of operation.

We want to share our many thanks to everyone who filled out a survey! We compiled the responses into a short PowerPoint to provide some context to our strategic planning.

What has resonated for me most in this role and what we have learned from you all is how the Compost Ed Centre creates impact through education and research. On one level, we transfer technical skills that empower workshop participants, site volunteers, university students, and schoolkids to take on climate mitigation and adaptation action. But on another – and more profound – level, we integrate folks into our community of plants and people. The Compost Ed Centre cultivates an increased sense of connectivity and reciprocity, and we do it by sharing knowledge in a welcoming way.

I can speak personally to how welcomed I have felt to this role and to the Compost Ed Centre’s community. I want to highlight how fortunate I’ve been to work with Alexis so much over the past few months as she has transitioned out of the Executive Director role. The pandemic and post-pandemic inflation has hit nonprofits hard, but Alexis’s steady and wise tenure as Executive Director made it possible for me to step into this role with a confident rather than crisis mindset. Amidst so much change in the world, I feel reassured that the Compost Ed Centre will continue to thrive in the same way for the next 30 years by catching and mixing folks right on into our community – just like the browns and greens in a hot compost pile.

Haven’t yet hopped into the hot compost pile?

Become a member of our community today!

We want to express our gratitude to the Government of Canada’s Community Service Recovery Fund, which has made our strategic planning work possible. The Community Services Recovery Fund is a one-time $400 million investment from the Government of Canada to support community service organizations, including charities, non-profits and Indigenous governing bodies, as they adapt and modernize their organizations. We have been able to engage in the staff retreat and other strategic planning activities with the support of the CSRF.

By Claire Remington, Executive Director

Victoria’s Vital Signs Report

October 12, 2023

Vital signs is a check-up that measures vitality of a region, identifies concerns, and supports action on issues that are important for our quality of life. Each year the Victoria Foundation shares this check-up in a report. This year, the Compost Education Centre is featured in the Environmental Sustainability section.

Read the report

Finalist for Nature Inspiration Awards

September 21, 2023

Healing City Soils is a finalist for the Canadian Museum of nature’s Community Action Nature Inspiration Award!  The award celebrates community groups who show leadership in taking action to protect wildlife and habitats, training volunteers and citizen-scientists, or in developing new educational programs for children and adults. The Healing City Soils program analyzes the CRD’s soil health, researches how native plants can be used to remediate contaminated soils, and provides plain language resources and resources to households interested in growing their food safely. 

CEC Annual General Meeting

September 13, 2023

At our Annual General Meeting (AGM), staff and board members of the CEC will review the important work that the organization accomplished in 2022. We will recap educational program achievements, new projects and programs, and discuss some of the ways that the CEC adapted its offerings to serve the public throughout the pandemic.

Want to join our Board of Directors? Find out how here!

CEC members in good standing will have the opportunity to vote on decisions that affect the future of the organization, including helping to elect new members to our Board of Directors. Members in good standing who attend the AGM will also be entered to win a door prize which can be picked up at the Compost Education Centre in following days.

Anyone can attend the CEC’s AGM. For members and non-members, attending our AGM is a great way to support the CEC and learn more about the work that we do here!

RSVP

Welcome Celia!

June 15, 2023

Summer is here and we are so happy to welcome our newest staff member! Celia has been a longtime volunteer in the garden and the Healing City Soils program. We are fortunate to have her on our team this summer. Below are some get to know me questions.

What’s your favorite dish? Tabbouleh! So fresh and delicious.

What’s your favorite summer activity? Riding my bike to the lake. 

What do you like about the Compost Education Centre? I like feeling connected to food, the land, and growing out food responsibly with reciprocity for the beings around us. I love sharing that education with everyone in our community who wants to learn. It’s been great working with the CEC and feeling connected to food and flowers! 

What’s your favorite berry? I love strawberries, but when it comes to flavor, raspberries have my heart.  

What do you do in your free time? I like to garden, sew, and read. Currently, I’m rereading the Lord of the Rings.