Routley Park Nov 24 2019

Published on November 25, 2019 under LMGT in Action

Thank you

Township of Langley (Eric). Partnering with our charity Green Teams of Canada allowed youth to make an impact on their local park and educated them about how climate change impacts them locally.

Amazing Lower Mainland Green Team volunteers:

Amasha, Amy, Bahar, Brandon, Brayden, Brian, David, Dianna, Emily, Emma, Evan, Hazam, Irene, Judith, Julia, kylee, Laura, Lauren P., Lauren K., Leslie, Lily, Logan, Melika, Micol, Nan, Pamela, Pooja, Qicheng, Sophia, Tunc, Vienna, William and 2 more volunteers (didn’t get their names)

Highlights

34 volunteers contributed 95 hours
16 cubic meters of invasive Himalayan Blackberry and Evergreen Blackberry (which out compete with our native plant species) was removed, mostly root crowns.
16 of the 34 volunteers visited Routley park for the first time
28 volunteers removed invasive plants for the very first time!
R.E Mountain Secondary School Sustainability Group participated (thank you George for making this happen!)
Students from SFU’s business program participated
Students competed to see who could dig up the biggest invasive blackberry root crown. We couldn’t decide between the longest and the largest, so two groups of students won!
Yummy home made tree shaped sugar cookies were happily eaten up

What Volunteers Said

“I felt as though the impact was very strong and it brought a sense of collaborative work and bringing the community together. ” – Emily V.

“personally, this gave me a feeling of involvement i wouldn’t have otherwise gotten had i not been presented with this opportunity. i also got to work hard and it really paid off seeing the end result of the work we all put in today. this program allows for a well organized and fun way to get outside and do something good, which makes me feel good as well. ”– Kylee K.

“What I enjoyed most was getting to spend time with my friends and helping the local environment. ”– Lauren K.

“I thought the impact was cleaning up our community space” – Lily X.

BEFORE AND AFTER PHOTOS

Before and After Photos Sept - Nov 2019

We ran our first activity at Routley Park on Sept 14th 2019, our second activity on Oct 23, our third activity on Nov 6th and the last one on Nov 24th. These before and after photos show the transformation over those 4 activities! We engaged 133 community members (mostly youth from Peter Ewart Middle School, R.E. Mountain Secondary, Langley Secondary and Brookswood Secondary) over the 4 activities and removed 44.5 cubic metres of invasive plants. Pretty darn awesome!!