Thank you, honourable members and Mr. Chair, for such a vast and collaborative process. I think everyone who has spoken today has shown that there is definitely a need, that there is a rich history, and that there are some really wonderful things happening on a national level around conservation at a practice, policy, and research level.
l'm here today to represent the Child and Nature Alliance and to share the great work we've been doing to connect children to nature. In doing so, I hope to highlight how the work we do aligns itself with the vision of the national conservation plan to protect, connect, restore, and engage, and to share some innovative approaches we'd like included in Canada's national conservation plan.
The Child and Nature Alliance operates based on a collaborative leadership model—collaboration being the key word here today—in which grassroots and policy-related initiatives are always done through a partnership model that engages multiple sectors, stakeholders, and leading organizations across the country. Our partners include organizations such as Parks Canada, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, provincial parks, parks and recreation, ministries of health, the David Suzuki Foundation, Scouts Canada, Bienenstock Playgrounds, Evergreen, ParticipAction, KidActive, the HALO research team...and this list could go on.
The alliance supports individuals, organizations, and ministries in connecting children and communities to nature by supporting collaborative dialogues and initiatives at both provincial and national levels. Examples of this include the Healthy Children Healthy Spaces conference in Ottawa in 2010, the Healthy by Nature forum in Vancouver in 2011, and the Get Outside BC youth leadership initiative in 2012. As a result of these collaborative dialogues, we have co-created the Vancouver Healthy By Nature charter, in addition to co-launching Take Me Outside Day and Nature Play Day. Lastly, we have participated in the minister's round table on parks and have worked closely with ParticipAction and Active Healthy Kids Canada in getting an outdoor and nature indicator placed in the report card highlighting a connection to nature as a major health indicator for children in Canada.
Currently we are working on launching two national initiatives, the first being the Natural Leaders Alliance and the second being Forest School Canada. The Natural Leaders Alliance is a network of youth inspiring youth and is driven by two youth representatives who sit on the board of directors for the Child and Nature Alliance. The Natural Leaders Alliance has been piloted through the Get Outside BC youth leadership initiative, which we hope to launch nationally to provide youth with the opportunity to engage and inspire each other to connect to the natural world.
The second initiative, which is the one I am responsible for leading currently, Forest School Canada, was born four years ago when Canada's first forest preschool, Carp Ridge Forest Preschool, was launched in Ottawa, Ontario.
Children within this model of education spend their entire days outdoors exploring local woodlands, creeks, meadows, and ponds. They follow a play and experiential-based curriculum and learn from natural materials found in the outdoors. Emphasis is placed on exploring local habitats, connecting to indigenous cultures and a sense of place, as well as practising sustainability and conservation in a child-directed and age-appropriate manner. On a daily basis, children will hike, snowshoe, birdwatch, track animals, identify plants and animals, compost, build birdhouses, engage in lots of art activities with natural materials, build fires and shelters, and grow and cook their own food.
This model of education started in the 1950s in Denmark and is now an education model used throughout the U.K. and within most Scandinavian countries. There are currently over 500 forest schools in Germany alone, and in parts of the U.K. all schools are mandated to bring their students into a park or woodland area for forest education at least once a week.
Since the launch of this preschool, there are now over 15 forest preschools, nature kindergartens, and forest schools that have opened or are in the process of opening across Canada. We have seen a movement within the field of education as educators begin exploring how they can start up similar programs or how they can incorporate nature-based education within their own settings, such as schools and day care settings.
This movement has had policy implications, is garnering lots of interest from academic and research institutes, and has moved environmental education into the early years and into the hands of all educators, not just outdoor educators working in satellite outdoor education centres.
As a result, the Child and Nature Alliance has formed a national education initiative, called Forest School Canada, to promote nature-based education in the early, primary, and secondary years through an increased use of the built and natural environment. This includes natural playgrounds, as was presented to the committee by Adam Bienenstock; outdoor classrooms; and municipal, provincial, and national parks.
The vision for Forest School Canada is to see an increase in outdoor and nature-based learning within all schools. This may mean launching forest schools in provincial and national parks where children can go to school year-round, partnerships between parks and school boards to support weekly forest education, and increasing natural playgrounds and outdoor classrooms on school grounds to deal with accommodations issues that all school boards are currently facing.
Forest School Canada has partnered with the U.K. national governing body for forest schools to develop a national teacher training program. The goal of this teacher training program will be to promote an increase in forest schools and nature-based programs by providing educators with the pedagogical knowledge and skills base to take their classrooms outdoors. We are looking to pilot this training program in the summer of 2013 in three locations across Canada, with a complete rollout of training in each province throughout 2014.
We are working closely with colleges and universities to incorporate nature-based education courses into faculties of education and early learning, and we have started building strong partnerships with provincial early learning associations as well as school boards.
Additionally, we are working with the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group to outline a Canadian research project to study the health outcomes and ecological literacy of children who attend nature-based education programs across Canada.
Lastly, we are identifying national policy issues and policy gaps that must be addressed to support teachers and administrators in starting up forest- and nature-based programs.
Forest School Canada addresses the minister's recommendation to engage with the formal education system in the 2012 minister's round table on parks. We envision this initiative as a way to get students and teachers into parks for education programs and also to have national parks as a venue and partner in the development and delivery of the forest school teacher training programs in each province.
The Child and Nature Alliance would like to ask the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development to acknowledge our two initiatives as national strategies and examples of best practice to promote conservation in Canada.
We would like to highlight the need to engage children beginning in the early years, to engage our formal school system as a way to increase impact, and to engage youth to drive this movement forward.
Additionally, we would like to highlight the necessity for collaborative leadership in order to continue connecting children to nature across all sectors and between all stakeholders.
Lastly, we ask that appropriate funds be allocated to develop, launch, and deliver both initiatives in each province in a comprehensive, collaborative, engaging, and sustainable manner.
Thank you.