By Joan LeBlanc, Staff Reporter, Sackville Tribune-Post
SPY Camp — Sustainable Planning for Youth — is coming to Port Elgin. Youths in the village and the surrounding areas will have the opportunity to take part in a two-day camp where they’ll have lots of fun while learning about sustainable planning for their communities. The camp is being held in Port Elgin on Tuesday and Wednesday, Aug. 17–18, from 9 am–4 pm each day.
“The camp is being offered with funding from the ‘Picture Port Elgin’ project — the village’s Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP),” said Amanda Marlin, research associate with the Rural and Small Town Programme at Mount Allison University.
Community sustainability is defined as meeting the needs of community residents without depleting the earth’s natural resources; providing for a good quality of life while ensuring that resources remain intact and viable for future generations.
Marlin explained that the SPY Camp has become an offshoot for youth, a fun way for kids to learn and get involved in community planning in their own area. SPY camp focuses on topics such as land use planning, environmental issues, sustainable development, local community services, and history and culture. It also uses a spy theme to engage the young planners who range in age from 9–14 years.
“Camp participants will be going on hands-on missions around the village to explore and learn about community planning. The program is adaptable to the issues in the particular communities that host spy camp. In Port Elgin they’ll be looking at coastal development issues,” she explained.
Marlin added that at SPY camps held in other areas in previous years, children were given the opportunity to make digital videos about sustainable planning options in their community and what they would like to see in the future. They have also created dream communities that depict in a map what the kids would like to see in their communities in the future.
“It’s a fun, hands-on way for kids to learn and get involved in community planning in their community. Kids are rarely given the chance to voice their opinions about the towns they live in but they have lots of ideas and good ideas. The future is theirs so it only makes sense to include them in the planning process. They then can also take some ownership and pride in their community,” said fourth year Mount A geography student and SPY camp leader Josh Davies, who has also assisted in program development for this year’s camp.
Through this initiative it is hoped that youth will become more community minded and will want to become more involved in their communities, she added.
Interested youth between 9–14 years of age must register by Thursday, Aug. 12 for the SPY camp by calling the Port Elgin Village Office during regular hours at 538-2120. Registration is free and will include snacks. Participants are asked to bring a picnic lunch each day, in addition to sunscreen and a rain coat.
“Many of the activities will be held outdoors, so children should come prepared for both sunny and wet weather,” Davies noted.
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