SDSS Eco Club hopes Earth Week starts 'ripple effect' across the community

Hamilton Spectator

02-05-2025

Stratford District Secondary School (SDSS)'s Eco Club proves once again that it doesn't take a lot of people to do something extraordinary.
'Usually people think that what they do won't be enough to change the world,' Eco Club member Naz Karazeyeek said. 'But if they got out of that thought and actually started doing stuff one by one, we would make a river, a lake basically, drop by drop. It's more about one person standing up and taking action.'
'When one person does it and they share what they're doing with people, it just keeps growing,' Rowan Watson agreed. 'And then exponentially people will start changing things that they do in their lives and maybe even reaching out to their communities and helping everyone change.'
'The thought that if you start doing something like recycling it's not going to change anything … it will,' Rory Auster said. 'Because of the ripple effect.'
Outreach and education were front and centre this week as the club, which has about 20-30 environmentally conscious students this year, hosted Earth Week at SDSS from April 21-25.
As Ewan Mann said, the focus of the week was on education. While the climate crisis is one top of mind for many people, chief of all the youth, the members of the club who spoke with the Times said that not every young person is engaged or believes in the crisis.
'The Eco Club is fairly aware, I would say the school at large is fairly unaware,' Mann said.
'(Earth) week is the only time where we get to make people a little more aware,' Watson added.
A number of guest speakers, like the City of Stratford's climate change manager Sadaf Ghalib and Climate Momentum's Bill James-Abra, came to the school to discuss what they do to tackle the climate crisis locally, among other feature events and speakers.
The 'Where's Bruno?' trend was a highlight for Zach Kritzer. The annual event has the school mascot Bruno hiding somewhere in the school and after a photo of him and a question is released over the announcements, students rush to find the bear – the first person to find him and answer the question gets treats to take back to their class. Like every year, the trend was a huge success with a lot of engagement.
For Watson, having Claire Scott of Claire Upcycled, a locally based eco-fashion streetwear brand, come and talk with students and show them how to make their own shirts was another peak feature of the week.
The week culminated with a trip that Friday to West Five, a sustainable housing development in London that 'represents the future of sustainable living, planned to harmonize modern urban living with environmental stewardship,' according to the development's website.
Aside from the week, the Eco Club has been hard at work with its extracurricular outreach.
The club continues to operate an urban farm on Smith Street, a project that is aimed to grow food for the school and the many nearby neighbours. Additionally, they are trying to get compost bins that can handle the compostable utensils and plates the school's culinary program uses.
Early this year, members of the club delegated at city council during the budget process, successfully convincing council to hire a new community energy liaison to assist Stratford citizens to find savings related to green initiatives, like governmental grants.
For all of their continued work, the club was honoured with the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority's inspiration award in February, which recognizes environmental stewardship and activism in the community.
Most excitingly, members of the club will be working with TEDx Stratford to host a student-led speaker series on June 10, with the theme of 'shaping the future.'
'We have three speakers and we are going to talk about something that we're passionate about on that theme,' Naz Karazeyeek said about the plans so far. 'Everything from filming, editing – it's all going to be from our students. So it's going to be a student project.'
More details on that project are to follow. All of the club members extended 'our biggest thank you' to teacher Christine Ritsma for all her help and guidance throughout the school year.