We are continuing to make progress on our projects and just wanted to keep everyone in the loop.
Community & Backyard Gardens
Goal: To help our community to learn how to grow their own food to reduce packaging, food waste and/or learn how to use their food waste to make compost for their garden.
Our new page Grow Your Own Food with backyard and balcony gardens; community gardens, and resources has been on our website for about a month.
Our Backyard Vegetable Garden forum went live April 15th on the NftP website. We have had a lot of views and some great posts from Dinah and Wing. Joan Porter started a new post on Straw Bale Vegetable gardening that is getting a lot of interest too. Thank you everyone for posting. Please check it out and add your own posts. We need tips, ideas, questions and answers to help engage everyone and make it a success!
Community Gardens were closed but recently just opened. I had a call with York Region Food Network this morning and their Aurora community garden is open. The goal is to grow food for the food bank. Due to COVID-19, they cannot run their community garden as usual, but are looking at ways for us to participate. I should hear back soon.
Food Waste Challenge
Goal: To reduce household food waste in the community.
Our first meeting with York Region Food Network, York Region and Eco-Caledon was held on May 1st. A lot of great information was shared. York Region is in the process of working on a food waste campaign. They will confirm in what capacity NftP can help out.
Everyone thought it was great to collaborate and liked the idea of doing a “friendly” competition between the different campaigns.
Next meeting for whole group will be held in early June. And possibly an earlier meeting for York Region campaign.
Photo by Esther Wechsler on Unsplash
Vegan Cooking Classes
Goal: To help transition our community to decrease their meat intake due to its high carbon footprint.
We will start the planning process for Vegan cooking classes soon so that we are ready to go when COVID-19 allows it.
While we wait until the pandemic settles, we continue to request and post recipes on our website and encourage people to try them out.
We are also looking at what can be done to get people more engaged – trying recipes and adding comments, possibly starting a vegan cooking forum to help with questions etc.
Photo by Robin Enotera
Transportation
Goal: To increase the transition from gas powered cars to electric vehicles.
Our focus has shifted a bit since no one is currently driving and gas prices have plummeted. However, Martin will work on some EV articles so they are ready to publish when the time is right.
Photo by Jan Kaluza on Unsplash
Climate Change Presentations
Goal: To educate the public on climate change and motivate them to take action.
Monica and Stuart have been busy creating a climate change presentation. They have modified a Climate Reality slide show and added their personal twists. Just a few tweaks here and there and it will be soon be ready!
Photo by Chris Gallagher on Unsplash
Social Media
Goal: To increase our outreach, boost our presence online while also increasing traffic to our website.
Marilyn had a great idea that we should find some students currently enrolled in a social media class in university and see if they would volunteer to help us out.
Marilyn has been busy and has researched and found the following colleges that offer Marketing Courses: Centennial, Humber, Seneca, CDI College; and Windsor University has a Communication Course.
Marilyn also talked to a marketing contact who suggested using social media, LinkedIn and employers in digital agencies.
And finally, Marilyn heard back from a teacher at Humber who is willing to help spread the word in her class and the Public Relations student. Photo by Pratik Gupta on Unsplash
Technical Training
Goals: Slack – To communicate more effectively within the Project Teams
Wing is working on the slack training. She would like to first start with addressing specific issues that some of our members have run into and are still not able to use slack. Wing will be sending an email with what problems people have run into so she can tailor her training to that.
Composting in Multi-level buildings
Goal: To reduce the amount of compost going into landfills. Specifically, the goal is to increase the number of existing multi-level buildings to implement green bins and their usage.
Currently on hold until we can gather in groups.
Richmond Hill has the GoingUp program that will install green bins in any existing apartment or condo building that requests it.
We will contact select buildings and if they don’t currently have a green bin program in their building, we will ask to meet to discuss. We could do a presentation at a condo board or with residents to explain the importance of composting. Also we will think of ways to help people bring their compost down. We will check with the city of RH to see if we could work together on this.
We have a couple of members who would like to get this program in their building so we could start with those buildings. Photo by Neerav Patel on Unsplash