To coincide with Earth Day, April 19th was the 3rd annual Tim Hortons Community Clean Up on Vancouver Island and with over 10 000 students participating from Comox to Victoria, our Island home is a little cleaner. There were several schools within our district taking part and a number of classes within our school that joined us in our effort. The primary students kept close to the school, but we took the opportunity to walk to a nearby park to pitch in there. Along the way, we picked up what we could, but there really wasn’t a lot of litter to be found. Once in the park, we combed the wooded areas and eventually took the back trails that edged the nearby subdivisions. It ended up being quite the adventure – more than we bargained for – and our 45 minute walk soon turned into an hour and a half. It was well worth it, though. and it opened our eyes to our neighbourhood home just a little bit more.

We’d like to thank Tim Hortons for sponsoring this event and providing the yummy timbits, BFI for picking up our school’s collection of garbage and recyclable materials that were found, and the Comox Valley Regional District (CVRD) for waiving the tipping fees at our local landfill where it all eventually ended up. After this experience, it’s clear we need to head out into our community a little more often to do what we can to keep our neighbourhood clean and beautiful.

Division 1, what surprised you most on our walk? After commenting here, your task this week is to write about your impressions of our clean up adventure and what you think some of our next actions could be to address this.

If you or your class has ever participated in anything similar, we’d love to hear about it!

image: Earth Day 2012 by Bioversity International released under a CC Attribution – Noncommercial – No Derivative Works license

Fall is harvest time for farming towns in British Columbia. Our community is no exception, although here it has an alternate meaning as well. During September, Harvest the Valley begins – only residents of our community aren’t necessarily out harvesting the fields. We pull together to stock the shelves of our local food bank and build awareness about the need for food donations. It’s also a great way for families and neighbourhoods to get involved because participating is about as easy as it gets:

1. Residents leave food items in grocery bags alongside their curb-side recycling
2. Harvest the Valley volunteers follow the recycling truck drivers around town and pick up the donations at the same time household recycling is picked up.  Easy as pie!

The program is only in it’s second year, but it’s been a huge success and helps to keep food on the Food Bank’s shelves past Christmas and through the rest of winter when supplies begin to dwindle. This year our class decided to participate. Our friend and Harvest the Valley promoter Zac Whyte dropped off grocery bags for us to fill with non-perishable food items and we set about spreading the word about the program to other classes in our school. We collected food over about a 3-4 week process and while it started out slowly, it eventually picked up momentum.

In the end our campaign was a huge success! We filled 35 grocery bags with tins, boxes, and pouches of non-perishable food items. Then, we found out that Campbell’s Soup and Shaw Cable would each match anyone’s donation to the Harvest the Valley program. Suddenly, every bit of food we collected actually equalled three! That meant our 35 bags would approximately equal 105 bags of food for our local Food Bank. That was an amazing feeling. We know made a difference in our own community. And it is only the beginning … we know we will find other ways to have a positive impact on our community … we’re not done just yet.

Thank you Zac Whyte, Shari Cauldron (organizer) and Valley harvesters for all the time and effort you put into organizing such a wonderful community event.

Note: After the Shaw and Campbell Soup donations were added to the total amount of food donated, our community brought in 25 000 kilograms of food to our local food bank.  Also, it’s important for us to share that since we began our Harvest the Valley project, the number of people accessing our local food bank has already increased to nearly 1200 individuals. We’ve learned that an increase is common as we head into the winter months.

images

All class photos and the Harvest the Valley images courtesy of Zac Whyte
Day232: Harvest by -Snugg- released under a CC Attribution – Noncommercial license
DSC03075by tetting released under a CC Attribution - Noncommercial license
Full of Confidenceby ubu_pakes released under a CC Attribution license
Comox Glacier from Back Road by paulhami released under a CC Attribution – Share Alike license
All other images photographed by J. Braidwood