Encouraging young people to live sustainably in nature, their communities and at home is the focus of a pair of summer camps.
Sowing Seeds Camp connects children to gardening, local food preparation and natural building through games and fun activities where they can personally experience the big picture of living lightly on Earth.
The first camp, for children 11-13 years old begins Monday (July 25) and runs to July 29 from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at both Park Avenue Elementary School and John Barsby Secondary Community School.
Participants learn natural building and design with cob, gardening stewardship, preparing and celebrating local foods and science in nature.
The second camp runs Aug. 8-12 from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. for children eight to 10 years old. Campers will study the natural environment and community gardens, giving them opportunities to personally experience connections in the natural world from native flora and fauna and planting and maintaining healthy organic gardens, to preparing foods grown locally.
“With the increasing concern with growing and buying local healthy foods here is a need to help children and youth make personal connections between how their food is grown and how they can easily prepare local foods that are tasty to eat,” said Shelley Serebrin, camp co-organizer.
Sowing Seeds has joined with Nanaimo Foodshare to offer opportunities for young people to prepare nutritious local foods in a safe and healthy community setting.
“The great thing about this program is that most of the food we will be preparing will come straight from the community gardens or local organic farms, emphasizing to the kids that obtaining foods from local sources is important and fun,” said Serebrin.
For more information and how to register, please call Nanaimo Foodshare at 250-753-9393 or Serebrin at 250-591-5707.