The Our Canada Project (OCP) is hosted by the Ontario-based organisation Learning for Sustainable Future (LSF).
In 2012, LSF hosted a Youth Roundtable in Toronto, which was attended by 22 youth delegates from across Canada. The purpose of the session was to engage youth in conversations about responsible citizenship and sustainable future in Canada. The delegates designed an innovative call to action in the form of an online sharing platform titled the Our Canada Project that was launched in 2013.
OCP is an online platform that contains over 650 cultural, environmental, social and economic projects, initiated by young people in Canada. A vast majority of these projects focuses on environmental issues through deploying simple, yet engaging hands-on approaches, such as creating school gardens, composting systems, waste water treatment and similar.
This online portal could be considered a ‘catalogue’ of EDST/GCE activities in Canadian primary and secondary schools, as well as of those initiated by other organisations. Most of these projects are action-oriented and deploy methodologies that are significantly more engaging than the standard classroom activities in formal educational settings.
Although the presented projects predominantly do not engage with controversial or difficult subjects, nor are they aimed at addressing structural causes of multiple global crises, this portal is highly recommendable to anyone working in GCE that is interested in learning about the myriad of possibilities for experience-based, learning-through-doing approaches to GCE/EDST.
The portal is of value also to those, working on advocacy for GCE, seeking examples of successful implementation of GCE in formal educational contexts. The fact that the portal was youth-initiated also makes the project an interesting case study in how young people – as the main GCE target audience, can be involved in designing new ways to promote and practice GCE.