When Nelson Wildflower teacher Krista Lynch brought her class to city council on Monday to present about their award-winning toilet bag program, she let her students do the talking.
“Our class theme this year was taking action. This means taking action with ourselves, with our learning and with world issues,” said Quinn Stothers. Another student picked up from there, with each new student speaking a sentence or two.
“Then we met [the City of Nelson’s] Ginger Lester and she introduced us to the toilet bag campaign and our class become involved,” said Lucia Pensiero, who was followed shortly later by Sequoia Hayden: “We taught people how much water a toilet tank bag saves — two to three litres a flush! Wow, that’s a lot, don’t you think?”
James Baio momentarily forgot his line, but when prompted by Lynch offered up this factoid: “We wrote to Justin Trudeau to share our concerns, and we hope you will too. And he wrote us back!”
That prompted enthusiastic applause from the mayor and council, who learned the class was awarded a $6,500 prize for their work, coming first nationally in a competition on water issues.
“This is part of Royal Bank’s Blue Water initiative. A water filtering system is going to be installed in our school and we’re going to be featured in an online magazine in June,” said Lynch.
She then turned it over to Mattaya Oakley.
“Now we feel inspired to continue taking action in our lives,” she, before the class continued in unison: “don’t forget to conserve water!”
Councillor Val Warmington asked about Trudeau’s response, and the Wildflower students informed council they were pleased to learn the prime minister is working on getting clean drinking water to First Nations communities.
“How inspiring,” said Kozak. “Way to go!”
