Share your responsible business ideas!

With a little help from Rocky Mountain Flatbread Education facilitators and big funding from Vancity, Responsible Entrepreneurs have been creating environmentally and socially conscious products right here in the elementary schools of Vancouver, BC, and Canmore, AB. Students from grades 2 to 12, have successfully developed, manufactured, packaged, marketed and sold socially and environmentally responsible products to their families and communities. This year in Vancouver, students from Lord Tennyson, Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth Annex, Charles Dickens elementary, and R.C. Palmer Secondary school, made some amazing environmentally friendly products. They created green cleaning kits, healthy snack bars, funky belts made from bike inner tubes, beeswax candles, potted plants, beds of lettuce, lavender bags, organic crepes, and much more!



DO YOU have any ideas of responsible businesses that kids could create? Our young responsible entrepreneurs have found ways to turn what we call 'junk', into something new; like turning bike inner tubes into fashionable belts, dog collars, and skate guards! They have also created and sold alternatives to unhealthy and environmentally harmful products, like green cleaning products. They love to incorporate what they've learned about climate change into their sales, for example, selling stainless steel water bottles to educate their customers on the harmful aspects of plastics on our health and the environment. We look forward to hearing your brilliant ideas!  

Time to get clean with green!

Thanks to funding from Vancity, this Spring, students at Queen Victoria Annex, and Charles Dickens Elementary in East Vancouver, learned about responsible entrepreneurship through successfully launching their own green cleaning businesses.

Students learned about climate change and actions they can take at home to reduce their carbon footprint. Some actions these students took were; taking shorter hot showers, turning the lights off, lowering the heat, not using plastic bags, using cold water to wash clothes, and many more. What do you do to reduce your carbon footprint at home or at work?

"Can we sell our responsible products to the whole world" was one student's response, after hearing about how harmful toxic cleaning products are for our health the environment. Here are some cleaning recipes that Queen Victoria Annex and Charles Dickens Elementary wanted to share with you! Please SHARE your green cleaning recipes!

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Essential Oil Air Freshener

~ 1 cup of water
~10 drops essential oil of your choice
- Spritzer Bottle

Mix the essential oil and water together in the spray bottle and tightly screw the cap back on. This can be spritz in the bathroom, kitchen, or any room to freshen. Also can mist on face for relaxation.
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All Purpose Spray

- ½ tsp washing soda (available in laundry section of grocery store)
- 1 tsp of lemon juice
- water
- (optional) 3 drops of essential oil of your choice (lavender, tea tree, rosemary…)

Combine the ingredients in a spray bottle and shake until the washing soda has dissolved. Essential oil adds extra anti-bacterial properties. Use this on your shower walls, kitchen counter tops, and for spot washing on the floor!
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Abrasive Tub and Tile Scrubber

- ¾ cup baking soda

- ¼ cup salt
- 2 drops of tea tree oil

Combine ingredients in a bowl and mix. Using a funnel fill the jars with the mixture. Use as you would Comet.
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Window/Mirror Cleaner

- 1 tsp of lemon juice in the bottle
- Fill ½ the bottle with vinegar
- Fill ½ the bottle with water.

Test the nozzle to make sure that it sprays. Then tighten it so that it won’t leak. Use as you would Windex.

Zen and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance

This spring we partnered with Canmore Community Cruisers (CCC) to provide our Zen and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance Program to Lawrence Grassi Middle School and Canmore Collegiate High School. We were able to have have the ENTIRE Lawrence Grassi Middle School go through the program with the help of CCC volunteers and the help of the grade 8 Leadership class. Each class calulated how many Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions they were able to save by riding their bike to school, and how many kg's they could save if they were able to take 'green' transportation to school everyday. Mme. Frasers class won by having the most GHG emissions saved for having nearly everyone take 'green' transportation to school that day. The students were also taught about bicycle recycling and different eco-products you could make out of bike parts. How to change and patch a flat tire, and the ABC's of Bicycle Maintenance. The program was similar for the grade ten students at CCHS, only they got to have more then 10 minutes at each of the stations. I would like to thank all the businesses that donated prizes to the event, and to all the volunteers with CCC. I would also like to especially thank Gini Dalgas with CCC for getting this program organized with me and going above and beyond a typical volunteer position. www.communitycruisers.ca

Local Heroes Honoured

We just wrapped up our final program of the academic year, with the local heroes celebration. The party was graciously hosted by the Flatbread Company, and a HUGE THANK-YOU to all the staff that made the day a success. This semester the program was completed by the grade 7/8 French immersion class from Lawrence Grassi Middle School. I had a great time working with this class and with their teacher Mme. Provencher. The students did a great job nominating people within the community that were deserving of this title. After agreeing on the nominations we had to go through the list and identify which of people were most deserving. To see who was chosen please drop into the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Restaurant in Canmore to check out the new hero photos. I would also like to thank Micky and Emerald Lake Lodge for the greatest chocolate cake I have ever had.

Renewable Energy Program

Renewable Energy Program

We had a great program that started this year with the help of KCP Energy. The program started with Geoff Domenico- owner of KCP Energy (http://www.kcpenergy.com), and Evan Koebel- Spring Creek Mountain Village coming into the grade ten ASCENT class at Canmore Collegiate High School. Geoff taught the students about solar energy and different ways that it can be used to effectively reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and provided them with a tour of the mechanical room at the Canmore Recreation Center. Evan talked about the geothermal energy used to heat the water used in the new units at Spring Creek Mountain Village and other forms of renewable energy.
With this information the ASCENT students prepared presentations and went into all the grade five classes in the Valley to teach them about renewable energy and to make solar ovens. Each grade five student was going to make a smore that day, but due to the lack of sun light resulting from a snow storm the students decided to wait until the weather came around.
All the ASCENT students really enjoyed this program even recognizing it as one of the best programs they have been involved in, and the grade five students really enjoyed learning from older students and were able to get a lot out of it. We hope that we continue to receive funding to provide this program to future grade five students.

Gettin goin' with Grassi

From Bike Tubes to Skate Guards

We worked with Mrs. Davisons Grade 8 Leadership class to covert old used Bike Tubes into Skate Guards. The process took some work, we started out trying to think of something to make out of the bike tubes, because they can't be recycled and Canmore produces A LOT of the them. We came up with a few ideas, i pod case and cell phone cases, but the girls didn't think that black would be the most attractive colour. Then we thought of belts, bags or binders, but we didn't have a sewing machine that would work with the rubber. Then we though of skate guards, we went through a few different prototypes, but this is the best one we came up with, because it uses only elbow grease and a tube. The other samples used lots of glue and rivets, but we thought it would be better to use a no extra resources. Although the Skate guards were a great idea, they could have been better executed with the use of a sewing machine, as the students found it really hard to crochet the tubes together in order to make the guard a little stronger. If anyone has any other ideas of what you can make with bike inner tubes, plus let us know!

Responsible Entrepreneurship Program- Canmore

Mrs. Indovian Duncan’s Grade 2/3 class from Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Academy participated in the responsible entrepreneurship program this term. The program started off with an introduction to climate change and the climate change game. The students each did their part, and have been challenged to continue doing their best to reduce their footprint on the earth. The business they created made Christmas cards and decorations out of recycled materials. The cards were made out of old/faded paper products and then stamped with an image they had carved into a reused piece of Styrofoam. The ornaments started out as prototypes that the students created out of recyclables, and then voted on to decide which ornaments would be the best sellers, easiest to make and gather the materials for. Some of the ornaments included gift boxes (cereal boxes turned inside out, folded appropriately and the stamped with art they made out of old styrofoam food trays), snowman ornaments (egg cartons), Angels (juice lids, and empty toilet paper rolls), Book Trees (made out of old books). They raised a total profit of $453. All the students were blown away by the amount of they raised by selling products that they designed and created, and what they were able to accomplish when they put their minds to it. The students decided to donate 100% of their earnings to buy goats, chickens, pigs, mosquito nets and soccer balls through World Vision.

It's a wrap- Local Heroes Program Canmore

The Local Heroes Program was a success! The program was completed by Exshaw School's grade 7 class. We started the program with the climate change game and challenge. The students made a great effort doing what they could to reduce their impacts on the planet and learned about reducing their ecological footprint. The students nominated about 20 people as local heroes, then narrowed down the list to 9 different people or teams of heroes. We wrapped up the local heroes program on Thursday November 20 with a local heroes celebration. The celebration was great fun, we had nearly all the heroes come, plus we had some media show up, I will include the link for the outlook article. http://www.albertalocalnews.com/rockymountainoutlook/news/35189739.html. Geoff from the Canmore Co-op donated the space for the celebration. We made a piece of art from garbage we found at Victory Thrift, and it will hang at the Co-op along with a letter about the local heroes program.