Today we starting on a great journey that will change the face of St. Anthony School. A group of dedicated volunteers from Ecology Ottawa, teachers, parents and one student worked up to seven hours to cut into tones of pavement and gravel. We filled an entire dumpster and created a huge pile of gravel too – all of this will be recycled by our contractor whose main job so far has been to cut into the old asphalt so we could pry it up and remove it from the yard.
The project was funded by Green Communities Canada who received funding from RBC . Evergreen Canada did the design work and Ecology Ottawa administered the entire project. What a great group of partners. I am so grateful that there are foundations and corporations that really want to get to work with schools like ours to make a better environment for our kids. This is how we must do things, look for great community partners who will continue to work with our school to fund depaving, the arts, recreation programming – anything that will make the educational experience richer for our students.
We have worked with so many wonderful groups this year – Opera Lyra, Little Horn Theatre, Table Tennis Canada, Evergreen Canada, Young Rembrandts, Learn to Play, Fun 2 Run, MASC, Organic Growers of Ottawa, Big Kid Entertainment, Christie Lake Kids, the YMCA, Social Rec Connect and Somerset West Community Health Center, and all our political representatives- all these groups and individuals have worked hard to provide a richer environment for our students. What a great privilege to work in such a wonderful community!
I want to thank all the groups who are working hard to give our kids something special as part of their educational experience. We really appreciate all you have done and all the time and resources you have poured into our school. You are part of our community and you are all doing wonderful work.
With help from our partners and new ones to come, we will continue our depaving work at St. Anthony and will continue to dig up the rotting asphalt that retains stormwater and winer melt, creates hazards for our kids and actually contributes to Global Warming.
A great day for our school – thank-you to all the volunteers and foundations that made this possible!
You can read more about what we accomplished together as a community here in this Ottawa Citizen article
I think this group has lots to offer our community and I am hoping that they will be able to use some of our vacant space here in the school this year. Any program that makes a real effort to connect kids to their community really has to be supported.