The Glocal Education conference today was not only inspiring, it housed the first meeting of the Children’s Association for Nature. Gl0cal is a combination of global and local, how local action contributes to global change. It’s also about how when tackling global issues you need to think about the problems in your own community, and about how change really starts within one individual.

First there was a speaker, the co-founder of 4REAL, a movement which combines media, music, dance, and culture to inspire young people to take action for the environment. The talk was very interesting, although hiphop and the modern sort of music is not really my thing.

Next everyone split up into thier seperate groups for each workshop. I was doing the WildEd one. We did some really cool activities. One of them involved talking with different people in the workshop about different aspects of your experiences in nature. There were several video clips we watched. We did one activity where when you wanted to say something about the earth you would put up both hands to catch the earthball. Overall it was an inspiring workshop although I fear that I will not be able to adequetly describe it.

After a short lunch break, instead of going to the next workshop all the kids from the 5 schools who me and Zoë invited went downstairs and had a meeting for about an hour. Unfourtunately, Zoë had to go home because she was not feeling well. First we discussed things each of our schools were doing to help the environment, and afterwards we talked about ideas for what we could do. Most of them had to do with fundraisers, and were one of the the two parts of them: How to raise the money and what to give it to. We all voted for one of each of the three things which were something that was not a fundraiser and the two parts of a fundraiser. In the end the decision was to start a garden at Gladstone because it is near all the other schools and has lots of space, while for the fundraiser to raise money through a craft fair to protect the Amazon rainforest.

I found a cool article about how a kid communicates with cuttlefish. Here’s the link:

http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/7ahln/bored_octopus_shoots_out_lights_then_trashes/c0649kw

On halloween, as I said I would earlier, I make an Eco-Kid superhero costume and carried my trick-or-treat for rainforests box. All together I raised $10.50 . My dad is going to take the box to his office along with all the candy we didn’t want (quite a substantial amount, by the way) so that people who make a donation can take some.

A few days ago, I was appointed as my school’s (Tyee’s) first environmental minister. My friend Zoë is the president. We were talking to our principal about all our ideas for green stuff. She had this great idea for doing ‘1000 acts of green’ and making it a school challenge (I made it 1001 because it is just that little bit more exciting). Eventually the conversation moved on to the idea of having a green club. Mrs. Rosa (the principal) told us about a conference about kids who had been in the ‘family of schools’ our school was part of and all the amazing sustainability-oriented projects they were doing. She thought we could invite a few kids with a real passion for nature and the environment from each of the schools in this family to meet us at the conference, and start an inter-school environmental club. We were going to think of a name for the club and I said I had been wanting to start a kid’s environmental club for a while and had come up with the name CAN, Children’s Association for Nature. Me and Zoë were going to be the co-founders, but she said since it was mostly my idea I should be the president. So now Zoë is the vice-president.

The CAN launch isn’t the only exciting event this week–the day after the conference is the deadline for an art competitin about nature and schools.So not only do I have to prepare for the conference, but I have to make my submission(s) and organize at least 20 others in the school to do the same. There are money prizes if you get published in the book, but the coolest part is that for every entry $5 gets donated to Tyee for sustainability projects, with a maximum of $100.