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South Park students do their part for Mother Nature

It’s proof that you can be environmental stewards in your community at any age.
clean up
Mayor George Harvie thanks Laurine Dane’s French Immersion Kindergarten class from South Park elementary for their efforts to clean-up garbage in Dennison Park and get the city to place new garbage bins in the park.

It’s proof that you can be environmental stewards in your community at any age.

Laurine Dane’s French Immersion Kindergarten class from South Park elementary recently completed a clean-up project that got the attention of the City of Delta and Mayor George Harvie.

“Our garbage clean-up was the result of me taking part in a free professional education program through National Geographic and I’m now a National Geographic certified educator,” said Dane. “We have been a very outdoor class this year. We’ve been to the Farm Roots Mini School and in Dennison Park, which we call the ‘fairy forest,’ usually once a week. We had butterflies and the children decided they wanted to release the butterflies in the fairy forest, but they also discovered a lot of garbage and didn’t want to release them into that setting.”

Dane said the young students did a garbage clean-up and then decided they wanted to take it a bit further by asking the city to put in new garbage bins in the park.

“They said we have to talk to someone about this, so the children learned about different levels of government and that we have a mayor and how would we write a letter to the mayor,” said Dane. “We wrote the letter and received a response from the mayor and they put garbage cans in Dennison Park. The students are absolutely environmental stewards. Seeing those garbage cans in the park…they saw that adults do listen to kids.”

Harvie said he was thrilled when he read the letter and with the students’ initiative.

“Being the mayor, this is the great part of the job,” he said. “It shows to me that they care. It’s important when the youth care that we react and support them. They’re our future, so anything I can do to build confidence in local government in saying you are never too old or too young to write and request things, that’s my job.”