Thank you so much Greater Victoria Green Team participants for your hard work and enthusiasm:
Shoreline Community School Grade 6 Classes: students, teachers, and parent volunteers!
What a fun day we had connecting people to one another and nature, all while restoring habitat! Keep on reading to find impacts, highlights and more from the day…
Impacts
- 38 students, 3 teachers, and 2 parents engaged
- 55 hours contributed to habitat restoration
- 2 people removed invasive plants for the first time, while most students were excited to continue to strengthen their invasive ivy removal skills
- As Portage Park is so close to Shoreline School, everyone had visited this park before and was excited to continue to work to improve the health of the area.
- 4 cubic metres (about 25 bathtubs full) of invasive English ivy removed
- 500 square metres of forest habitat revitalized
Highlights
- We spent the day engaging students from Shoreline Community School removing invasive English ivy from the forest of Portage Park in View Royal.
- We had an absolutely beautiful day enjoying the bright, warm sunshine and blue sky as a welcome sign that spring is here!
- Habitat restoration is a very satisfying and empowering aspect of environmental restoration and works very well for hands-on learning! The students were excited to get out of the classroom and get their hands dirty to help out the local park!
- We had a lot of fun working together as a team to pull and haul invasive English ivy to create space for the native trees and shrubs that were planted in the fall and the native wildflowers that will bloom here in the coming months.
- We were excited to return to this park to check on the native trees and shrubs we planted here last fall as part of a TD Tree Days planting activity
- The students had fun competing to find the longest strand of English ivy and jumping rope with the long strands! Check out a video of students jumping rope with ivy vines here
- Students enjoyed finishing up the activity with a quick visit to the playground in the park and snacking on some granola bars, gummies, and oranges!
- The students demonstrated a high level of engagement, ambition, and enthusiasm regarding the impact of the invasive species removal efforts, and an excitement to return to this park again!
Community Investment Partner
A huge THANK YOU to the Town of View Royal for partnering with our charity, Green Teams of Canada, and making this activity possible with their financial support and direction!
Together we are achieving our common goals and creating connected, healthy and resilient communities engaged in environmental stewardship.
Special thank you to Chris, the Habitat Restoration Coordinator, for helping facilitate this activity!
Why We Do This Work
The Greater Victoria Green Team organizes hands-on educational activities that have a positive environmental impact to empower people. Through activities such as invasive plant removals, plantings, litter cleanups and more, we are fostering connections with others and nature so that health and well-being is prioritized, lifelong environmental stewardship is promoted, and community members are enabled to take care of themselves, each other and the places they live. We all have the power to make a difference!
We all experience mental and physical health benefits from spending time in nature, including reduced stress and anxiety, and improved mood, focus, memory and more. While doing so, we can also have a positive impact on the environment as demonstrated through this activity!
Staff Who Made This Activity Possible
Leading activities on the ground is Kaitlin Warren, Program Manager for the Greater Victoria Green Team, whose positive energy and passion for creating change inspire participants to take further action.
Supporting her is Viloka Luna, Partnerships Manager whose expertise in strategic and mutually beneficial partnership building ensures sustainable programming for our charity.
Together, Kaitlin and Viloka are fostering a community of environmental stewards and contributing to a brighter, greener future for all.