We know not every parent/grandparent/caregiver in our network can get as involved in our local teams as you’d like to. In 2022, we’ll be offering seasonal family action ideas to bring climate action to you! We hope your family will join in around your kitchen table, or with friends or neighbours. You’ll be acting with hopeful families across the country and making a difference. Make sure you're signed-up here for updates.
Spring: Family Climate Action
Learn, connect and put your art into action
As spring unfolds around you, it's the perfect opportunity to deepen your awareness and connection with the place you're part of and remember that everything is connected. The natural world is alive and all around us, all the time. No matter where we are. Our Spring Action asks you to connect to the land around you, appreciate nature and make art with your family. Then we’ll turn your art into action.
Here’s how to take part
1. LEARN AND CONNECT
With your family or students, research and discuss whose traditional territories you’re on. What languages are spoken? What treaties exist? What types of plants and animals live around you?
Here are some links to get you started: Native-land.ca, whose.land, Warrior Kids podcast, Seek app (to identify the plants and creatures).
Bonus idea: meet outside with your For Our Kids team, community group or a group of friends/neighbours. Take a nature appreciation walk and share what you've learned.
2. MAKE ART
Pick something in the natural world around you that you’re grateful for. Draw a picture, take a photo, or make something crafty that represents it. Add a title, your first name, age, traditional territories (town/city).
3. SHARE IT WITH US!
Take clear photos of your creations and submit them via this google form by June 2, 2022.
**If you don't have a google account email us the info at [email protected], subject: spring action.**
We’ll take your submission and create an art book called “What We Love” to showcase what families in our network appreciate about the world around them and what’s at stake if lawmakers don’t take climate action seriously. We’ll send it to Chrystia Freeland (Mom, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister) and other politicians who are making decisions about financing a green and just transition away from fossil fuels.
Need more inspiration?
Here's a reminder from Dr. David Suzuki that nature is not "out there" - it is part of us and we are part of nature.
It's part of us from the air we breathe (created by oxygen production and carbon removal by plants), the water we imbibe (in Vancouver, water is received from the hydrologic cycle by three watersheds where it is cleansed by old growth tree and plant roots and soil microorganisms), all of our food was once alive, most grow in soil which is a living complex, and all the energy in our bodies that we need to grow and play and work is sunlight captured by photosynthesis.
We are a part of nature, not apart from it even though we live in a human made habitat. And all the animals and plants are part of the system that cleanses and replenishes those things. Even though it is not officially spring, in Vancouver, trees and shrubs are already showing signs of life in buds and blossoms and sap that is running. Now while trees are naked, you can see and count the birds' nests, try to notice holes from woodpeckers and other birds, squirrel nests.
Try to imagine the shape of the root system which will be just as extensive as the branches and those roots are touching each other and other trees and exchange materials and information. The ground is covered in worm casts, showing that worms are tunneling through the soil aerating and watering it. What happens to the garbage we put outside every week? Where does the electricity come from when we turn on the lights? So much to learn even in the city...
