Close To Eighty Avon Maitland District School Board Students Attended The Second Annual Secondary Student Environment Forum In Exeter

by Bob Montgomery

Students from almost ten Avon Maitland secondary schools attended the board's second Secondary Student Environment Forum in Exeter on Monday.

Grade twelve student Sophia Buckman is the President of Eco Exeter and explains each of the schools is asked to bring their environment team or a science class to the conference. She says the broad focus is about environmental practices and reducing waste but they also spent a lot of time discussing indigenous practices and learning about First Nations people and their view on the land.

Most of the morning was spent learning about how they preserve their ways and about their treaties. After lunch, the Eco Exeter Team made their presentation and then the students got to visit several of the stations that were set up by the different presenters. She says at their table they talked a bit about how Eco Exeter got started and discussed how what Eco Exeter has done might be helpful in their community.

Buckman says one of the primary goals of the conference is to exchange ideas and learn from what other communities are doing to address a problem another community might be dealing with. Hopefully every team will have an idea that they can take back to their community. That could be anything from starting their own environment team to introducing a new way to deal with a problem in their community.

Buckman says a couple of weeks ago they had a similar conference for the public school and the Eco Exeter Team attended that just to show them how they got started and what they're working on now. She said it was very interesting to see how many of the public school students from different schools were dealing with similar problems.