Pacific Green co-founder, Warren Carr, joins the Board of the Run For One Planet Legacy Fund for Children.
Read the original article at the Pacific Green website.
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17,000 kilometers to raise awareness about health and the health of the planet is just the beginning.
Run for One Planet runs right through its tour’s finish line, launching its Legacy. The 2008/2009 run tour across Canada and around the USA, has already partnered with Canada’s largest endowment organization, the Vancouver Foundation. Now it has folded Earth Run and Smencils into the eco-mix. The environmental action organization has always had its sights set long, on the Run for One Planet Legacy, which is filling out in three parts: The Legacy Fund, Action Ambassadors, and Team Run for One Planet. Each slice carries its own action-backed mission to bring about an overhaul in kid-centric environmental stewardship.
The Legacy Fund is the well of financial support for children’s visions, and has been growing since the Run’s inception. The capital investment came from the co-founders, their closest friends and family, and also local British Columbian businesses and widely known sponsors such as Planet Organic Market and BC Hydro Team Power Smart. All along the tour, donations have been collected from schools, businesses, individuals, even anonymous passersby, in anticipation of disbursement to child-initiated eco-projects. Directed by their students, schools will submit requests to fund, for instance, the building and maintenance of organic gardens, and recycling and compost programs, or even solar panel renovations, and low-flow water device installations. Each Legacy-backed endeavour will be imagined and carried out by kids.
Another arm of the Legacy will feature the assembly of Action Ambassadors, students who peer-educate in classrooms, eco-clubs, and school-wide about environmental stewardship. Using the ‘Trickle-Up Effect’ (where adults learn by osmosis through the ecologically sound actions of the kids around them), the youngsters will be ‘trained’ in the environmental knowledge platform of R41P, and help their friends (young and old) become more active at reducing their eco-footprints. Both the simple training manual and a thirty-minute downloadable presentation (Kids, Teach Your Parents Well’er) will help the Action Ambassadors to engage their classmates in environmental challenges, ultimately instilling an active respect for the natural world.
Finally, Team Run for One Planet (age twelve and under) will register annually in the Earth Run, which begins this year in Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, and select cities in the USA and Spain. Racing locally in the Legacy’s inaugural year, and keen to expand along with the Earth Run, Team R41P will raise awareness about the Legacy’s mission – and earn their race registration– by selling Smencils. These are the pleasantly scented recycled newspaper-fibre writing sticks (fragrance-sealed inside their own corn-compostible tubes) that have made kids and adults alike grin with curiosity as they jot a note, or sign up for the Action Challenge. Dollar for dollar, with each Smencil sold dropping another buck into Team R41P’s Legacy bucket, kids everywhere can be gleeful on Grape while eagerly Eliminating Plastic Bags.
To usher in the next phase of Run for One Planet, there is a whole new young crew to bolster into action. They will stand strong upon the Legacy Fund’s firm foundation, Action Ambassadors united as pint-sized eco-warriors, and ready to sprint alongside Earth Runners everywhere. Until then, it’s small steps adding up.
Pacific Green Climate Solutions is proud to support Matt Hill, Stephanie Tait and the Run For One Planet Legacy.