Despite our first full year as a group occurring during COVID, we organized a bunch of events and mobilized a lot of parents and grandparents. We hope you will join us in 2021 as many hands makes climate action easier, more fun and dare we say, enjoyable?
Mother’s Day Demonstration at Parliament Hill
(photo credit Brad Amson)
On Mother’s Day we stood in solidarity for all the parents who had planned a Mother’s Day March led by Méres Au Front which was cancelled when COVID restrictions were put in place.
Our demonstration was featured in Le Droit and on CBC Radio-Canada. It coincided with letters and green hearts being delivered to politicians across Canada asking for science-based, bold climate action.
Earth Day Demonstrations (April 2020)
We asked parents to send in drawings and letters to remind elected officials that Earth Day should be a day to celebrate and protect the earth and the best way to do that is to combat climate change.
Municipal Climate Action Plan Budget Demonstration (July 2020)
During the summer, For Our Kids worked with key partners like Ecology Ottawa, CAFES and Black Hub 613 to organize a press conference and petition to stop city council from defunding our climate action plan, Energy Evolution, by almost 80%. We were successful in ensuring these funds remained where they were needed. Read more here.
Global Climate Strike (September 2020)
Adults and children worked on 4 art panels that we displayed at the global climate March. We encouraged parents to support this and other youth-led climate protests by participating in them, funding them and promoting them. Youth need to know their actions to make change are relevant, important and needed.
Learning about the impacts on children’s physical and mental health (October)
We partnered with MD moms 4 a Healthy Recovery and hosted a panel discussion featuring medical and climate experts to learn about the real and current effects that climate change has on children of all abilities and what we can do as parents to help lessen the psychological impact of climate anxiety that children as young as 10 can experience. You can watch all the videos of the speakers here as well as a summary. Spoiler alert: the way to reduce anxiety in children and adults is to talk honestly about climate change and to take some type of action. No matter how small to start with.
Presenting at School Boards (October 2020)
One of our members presented at a school board budget meeting to discuss the benefit of walking school buses and active transportation, particularly in light of covid. And we also wanted to ensure that the funding for the environmental initiatives program was maintained despite the need for funding cuts. We hope to continue working with school boards in the future as there is so much learning that could be done within schools for children and parents. 
Divest from Fossil Fuels (November 2020)
In November, our group cohosted a webinar by Shift: Action for pension wealth and planet health, co-organized by For our Kids Toronto. You can watch the webinar here, and also stay tuned for our day of action on January 29th. We will be working with Climate Pledge Collective. Learn more about the day of action here.
Presenting at a Climate Change Conference (Nov 2020)
One of our members sat on a panel of intergenerational approaches to climate action during the 2nd Annual Symposium for the Centre de recherche en innovations et transformations socials (CRITS), and spoke about “where are the parents? How to ensure climate action events are family and parent friendly”.
Pop up Art Installation for City Budget Deliberations.
Parents and children used their creative talents set up a pop-up art installation to send a message to our city council: We need a city budget that reflects the climate emergency declared 18 months ago. We used children cut outs to create a powerful visual of what should be the city's #1 priority, creating a safe future for our children. You can read our open letter to Ottawa City Council here.
In December we published this Op-Ed through medium: Your Child's letter most important letter to this season is not their letter to Santa.
We hope it inspired families to write Holiday Cards to their elected officials
Stay tuned for next year! Our first event will be a virtual chat on Wednesday January 6th at 8 pm and another one on Thursday January 7th at 7 pm. (We know bedtimes cover the gambit so we are hosting two different times!) We hope you will join us!
Do you have a passion project related to climate change you would like to see take form? We would love to help. Email us at forourkidsottawa (at) gmail (dot) com
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