Grant inspires growth

The community of Wabowden, Manitoba is growing happier and healthier with a little help from Eleanor Woitowicz, Bonnie Monias and an ACU Sustainable Community Grant.

For the past five years Woitowicz and Monias, both Mel Johnson School teachers, have encouraged youth in their school and community to plant and tend gardens as part of the school’s science curriculum.

Inspired by the Frontier School Division’s “Veggie Adventures” science curriculum, Woitowicz used her gardening skills to help turn this school’s project into an international success. In 2010, with the help of their ACU grant, the Mel Johnson School Garden Project extended the reach of the school’s garden project into the community, allowing Wabowden residents to benefit from the skills the students have gained since the program began.

Wabowden, 650 km north of Winnipeg, is home to approximately 600 residents. The school’s gardening club had only 10 members just five years ago; now there are over 45. ACU’s grant also allowed more than 30 students to attend educational trips to Winnipeg where they visited FortWhyte Alive farms, learned about the Green Space program at Red River College, toured the St. Leon wind farm and explored alternative energy sources at Argyle Alternative School.

The program has been featured in a film titled “…And this is My Garden,” and also on the website of the David Suzuki Foundation.

Woitowicz, Monias and Don McCaskill, Frontier School Division assistant superintendent, were invited to New York City to make a presentation about their project’s success to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development.

Since the garden project began in 2006, the community of Wabowden has built 73 personal and community gardens. In addition to working on their home and school gardens, students tend to all of the seedlings for the gardens in the school’s 1,200 square foot greenhouse. Students are proud to say that their gardens are 100% organic, herbicide and pesticide free.

Woitowicz is also proud—to teach her students and the community about gardening. She knows that they are learning many life skills necessary for sustainability. “Students learn to have a strongwork ethic, they learn to be responsible and they learn about nutrition.”