Adventures in Outdoor Environmental Education

The hallmark of a truly sustainable community is an environmentally conservation-minded population.

From 1971 to 1996, over 300,000 students participated in outdoor environmental education programs that operated out of the Dundas Valley Conservation Area.  In 1996, due to the budget restraints of both the area school boards and the HCA, the program was forced to withdraw completely from its education endeavours.

The Hamilton Conservation Foundation has recently committed to support the reinstatement of the HCA's Adventures in Outdoor Environmental Education.  Over a period of three years, this program will provide Elementary and Secondary School students from grades 2 through to OAC in greater Hamilton a 1/2 day session for 200 classes each year, at the Trail Centre located at the Dundas Valley Conservation Area.  We anticipate an average of 60 students per day over 100 environmental education days.  This translates into 6,000 students per year, or 18,000 students over a three-year period, who will benefit from the Adventures in Environmental Education.

Test experience with students in the Dundas Valley tells us that the environmental education program can leave a lasting and indelible impression on many students.   Environmental Education in the Dundas Valley will take students directly into one of the finest and largest natural areas in Hamilton.  This program will strengthen student awareness and knowledge of their responsibility to their environment and develop their problem-solving skills for the future. 

Children can learn a little by listening; they learn more by seeing; but they learn most by doing.  These students will assess water quality in the streams, they will identify and measure the forest trees, they will find the birds, small mammals, frogs and salamanders of the Carolinian forest, they will undertake many other environmental studies.  In other words they will learn because they are doing those activities.

The success of this program rests entirely in the hands of leaders in our community.  Without these partners, Adventures in Education would not exist.

This page features stories and pictures from children who have completed the program