Local Journalism Initiative
Sedley’s School Community Council has received a boost in its bid to build an outdoor classroom at the village’s school. The SCC recently received $8,000 toward the proposed project, thanks to a donation from CanPacific Potash. CanPacific had canvassed the councils of local communities in range of its proposed Albany Project mine before Christmas, in search of local projects that could benefit from additional funding. Final decisions were left up to municipal councils. In Sedley that meant $2,000 for the Sedley Seniors and Youth Green Committee, along with $8,000 toward the SCC’s initiative, which chairperson Cristalee Allan noted still requires approval from Prairie Valley School Division before it can proceed. “We don’t need money from the school division to do this,” Allan said. “We’d just need their approval to be able to build one at the school. There are other schools in Lumsden and Regina that have outdoor classrooms.” What is an outdoor classroom in the first place? Regina Public Schools has an outdoor education covering topics such as the formation of badlands, life cycles, environmental conservation, First Nations culture, how prairie settlers lived and weather, as well as soil, plant and water sciences. “It depends on who you ask,” Allan said. “For ours, we don’t have it all planned as we need to ask the teachers what they want in there. It would be a place where you could teach kids how to grow their own food or watch the stages of plants as they grow. Even having a greenhouse or having your own green space. There’s a lot of benefits to mental health to have somewhere you can sit and look at live things.” Allan said there can be learning opportunities even just having a rain barrel as part of the outdoor classroom, to show sustainable methods of living or parts of the water cycle such as evaporation. Other communities receiving funding from CanPacific prior to the Christmas holiday season included the Village of Vibank, where council directed the full $5,000 toward the community’s library, and the village of Odessa, which decided to put its $5,000 contribution from CanPacific toward interior upgrades at its local community centre. Keith Borkowsky, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Quad Town Forum