In an event cosponsored by BC Parks and HCTF, educators came together at Strathcona Provincial Park to participate in HCTF Education workshop. Led by HCTF Education’s WildBC Facilitator, Luisa Richardson, the group’s goal was to learn and teach winter ecology activities they could do with their own students.

Using Get Outdoors and Below Zero activities at attune their senses to the snowy world around them, learning was brought to life through hands-on learning.

“All participants were enthusiastically and joyfully engaged. They were happy to receive activities that allowed them to teach youth about habitat, biodiversity and stewardship to lighten their foot print in snowy habitats protected places,” Richardson reported. “We were all surprised at how much harder it was to play predator prey simulations in snow. It drove home how much more energy animals need to find food, water, shelter in winter, and how much harder it is for them to survive.”

Events such as this one, bringing together HCTF workshops for educators is made possible by the BC Parks license plate funding program.

Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation is pleased to once again help sponsor the Canadian Network for Environmental Education and Communication (EECOM) conference. This popular annual gathering brings together educators from across the nation to share resources and best practices related to place-based education and environmental literacy.

“Partnering with #EECOM2018 is a great way of living out HCTF’s mission to foster environmental stewardship from a young age,” explains HCTF Board Chair Winifred Kessler. “We know classroom programs are a great way of encouraging life-long conservation, and so we are very happy to help teachers gather new tools to take back to their home communities.”

HCTF is part of the BC Classrooms to Communities Network, a group of diverse organizations working together to link education, community and conservation in B.C. This year’s conference has chosen the theme “Classrooms to Communities”, which envisions “learners and educators being deeply connected to place, community and planet, able to effectively communicate their stories of connectedness, and taking responsibility to do so.”

The 2018 conference will take place Thursday October 18 to Sunday October 21 at St. Eugene Mission Resort on Ktunaxa Nation land in BC’s Kootenay Rockies. St. Eugene Mission Resort is owned by several Ktunaxa communities: ʔakisq̓nuk First Nation, ʔaq̓am, ʔakink̓umǂasnuqǂiʔit (Tobacco Plains), yaqan nukiy (Lower Kootenay) and Kyaknuq+i?it – the Shuswap Indian Band. This former residential school site now serves as a vehicle for education and economic development, and is therefore a very fitting venue for this conference.

“We are very grateful for the support of HCTF and share the Foundation’s commitment to finding creative ways to facilitate place-based learning,” says CBEEN Executive Director Duncan Whittick, who coordinated the event. “This conference marks the culmination of work by the Classrooms to Communities (C2C) provincial collaboration which HCTF has been part of since the very beginning.”

The conference will be the launching point for annual provincial Classrooms to Communities conferences taking place across BC as part of the provincial Pro-D day on October 19, 2018. Click here for more information.