Green Community Grants success stories

The solution? Indoor vermi-composting, of course!
Through the generous support from Loblaw Companies Limited and WWF”s Green CommUnity School Grants Program, the Crossroads School’s compost  is now one of 178 green projects underway across the country. Since receiving their grant, a nearby school was able to loan the club a “worm factory” bin, additional equipment, and worthwhile knowledge about indoor composting. While two of the school’s classrooms are already actively vermi-composting, Crossroads School has also paid the good deed forward by using the grant money to provide an additional six bins to other schools in the district, so they can follow suit.
green school grants
 

(C) Angela Petsnick

Crossroads isn’t stopping there. They are working to create a library consisting of educational support materials to help teachers incorporate worm composting into their curriculum. These materials will assist in inquiry-based learning for science, math, and language, and will help students across the district to gain understanding of how vermi-composting works.
“Using worms elicits students’ natural curiosity about the world,” Principal McCabe believes. “This creates a classroom culture of learning that is purposeful, fun, productive, and responsive to students.”  As a next step, Crossroads School will be connecting with other schools via technology to share the project and to teach key learnings to other schools. They are also eagerly looking forward to the opportunity when their worms have multiplied more to share two more bins with other schools.
The Green CommUnity School Grants program has already distributed over $600,000, and the 7th round is now open for applications. If you have a project idea that will connect students with nature, help reduce a community’s impact on the environment, increase understanding of environmental issues and solutions, stimulate environmental leadership, and inspire students and communities to take action then apply now!. Applications are being accepted until 3PM EST on April 9, 2013.