Neat - Fort St. John, B.C.
We like to give back when we travel, so we are trying to volunteer as much as possible on this trip. Sometimes it’s hard to find a place that needs help when they don’t advertise on the internet, but sometimes you find these incredible organizations and everything lands perfectly in your lap. That’s what happened with “NEAT”. We looked up “volunteering” around Dawson Creek BC and found these guys up north in Fort St. John that build community gardens at elementary schools for the students and teach them how to grow their own food!
They also focus on teaching the kids about where their food comes from and actually took the students to Walmart and tracked the origin of a tomato — it was from deep within Mexico! This is their Food Secure Kids Program. It’s smart, it helps the kids, and it gives them hands on learning and doing experience in garden and teaches them food cultivation. We were blown away by everything this organization does and stands for. We immediately emailed them and found that they needed help the next day at 2 different elementary schools with kindergarten classes. We said we were in! We spent the morning with Heidi at Duncan Cran Elementary school tilling and weeding garden beds while she helped 2 classes plant their seedlings. Then we went across town to Ecole Central where we helped Emily’s classes decorate garden posts and plant their vegetables. It was an honor volunteering with them and we encourage anyone traveling through that has a bit of spare time to help them out in any way you can. They are always looking for extra sets of hands to help out in the garden as there are only 4 she-roes who keep this organization going. To volunteer with them contact Karen at this email: Karen@neat.ca and to find out more info about NEAT go to their website neat.ca
Get out and Vounteer!
