My name is Emily, I’m the new Child and Youth Education Assistant at the CEC, and I’m very excited to be working here for the summer! While originally from the territories of the Anishinaabe Mississauga peoples out East, I have been living on these lands for the past 7 years. As a graduate from the Geography and Indigenous Studies departments at UVic, my experience and interests lie primarily in community-based research, environmental education, and climate justice.
My interest in working with the CEC came from a passion for projects that help support healthy and reciprocal relationships to the land, as well as instilling these values in the hearts and minds of our society’s youngest members.
In my free time you’ll find me gardening, climbing, practicing my Spanish, and trying to entertain my very needy cat. Besides helping with the Child and Youth Education Program, I’ll be spending my time with Zoe-Blue working on some fun communications materials. Come find me in the office and garden; I love a good chat, especially when it’s about Native plants!
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.
Hey everyone! This month I wanted to share a new resource with you that we’ve been super into lately at the CEC. Frontiers for Young Minds (https://kids.frontiersin.org/) is an “open access scientific journal written by scientists and reviewed by a board of kids and teens.”
On their website you can find hundreds of articles on a wide variety of topics from soil health and ecology, sustainability, anatomy, chemistry, biology, human health and more. Peruse articles written specifically for youth that will challenge young learners with new concepts, words and ideas while maintaining accessibly with the option to hover over new concepts for definitions, lots of great images and glossaries.
This website is a cool source for scientific info for school projects, or just exploring and learning new information for kids ages ~12 and up! The accessible yet scientific language and cited content would also benefit highschool learners, or adults who are looking to learn something new!
As soil contamination is one of our focuses here at the CEC, this week I was excited to read their article “How Soil Invertebrates Deal With Microplastic Contamination.” Check it out for a simple introduction to soil invertebrates with detailed images, and a quick breakdown of what they are, what they do, and how they interact with microplastics in our soil! There was lots of info in the article that was new to me, so I hope you can learn something new ?
Volume 2 of our Biodiversity Zine is now published! This new volume is focused on Indigenous Ecological Stewardship and explores stories of 6 Indigenous folks, and the relationship and connection they have with land. The Biodiversity zine is written and created for youth by CEC staff member Zoe-Blue! It’s a great resource to explore Indigenous Ecological Stewardship with your children, or as a self guided resource for older youth. The current volume looks at invasive and native plants, remediation, Indigenous plant knowledge and how we can better care for the land we are living on. Click here to view the PDF version of the zine. The Zine is also available for pickup at the CEC, or via mail, both by donation. Know of other great resources for child and youth education relating to composting, soil health, or ecology/sustainability more broadly? We would love to hear about them and continue to share these resources. Please feel free to share any resources you encounter with our Child & Youth Education Coordinator Elora at education@compost.bc.ca
This month we are highlighting another great zine made in the community. The “Loving the Land” zine was made by the Youth Food Justice Group this summer and is a great resource for youth, as well as people of any age! The zine is filled to the brim with ideas for interactive activities, reflection exercises, games and more. It’s a great zine to use for guided exploration. It’s available for download here. I encourage everyone to explore it with your children, or take a look through yourself!
