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Photo courtesy City of Richmond

Take Me Outside week

Published 12:49 PDT, Fri October 25, 2024

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Wrapped around Take Me Outside Day, (taking place on Wednesday, October 23), is an entire week devoted to outdoor learning playing and exploring.

Take Me Outside Week, is courtesy of Take Me Outside, a Canadian non-profit, charitable organization.

For most of us, choosing to be outdoors comes naturally and is highly desired. To ensure this perspective and opportunity flourish early with our youth, on the official Take Me Outside Day, (October 23), educators, parents and guardians, like myself, will take their young learners outside to strengthen bonds with the natural world.

In Richmond, we have four mild seasons (aside from climate change’s extreme weather events) and breathtaking views within the city and beyond our borders.

To kick off October, City Council received the mid-term highlights of our Council Strategic Plan 2022-2026. One of our focus areas is leadership in environmental sustainability. I’d like to acknowledge and thank you, the reader, for your contributions to this goal.

The Annual Tree Sale event, earlier this month was another smashing success this year! I picked up two pear trees, already planted and ready to grow fruit for future generations of pear lovers. I couldn’t believe how quickly some of the varieties sold out, thanks to all those eager tree lovers. Our friendly staff greeted residents at the Works Yard, and I saw nothing but smiling faces in the lot. Keep up the effort to help us grow our urban tree canopy year-round.

The popular annual Richmond Street Banner Contest has just closed, and the votes have been counted. Congratulations to the 10 winning designs. The city will be printing over 1,000 banners and lining our streets for next year. These vibrant images, brighten our routes as we traverse the city sidewalks, bike lanes, and roads. Below the banners we are also quite fortunate to have many manicured boulevards that burst with beautiful bulbs and other flowering plants. Voting took place through Let’s Talk Richmond and ended on October 15.

The Richmond Environmental Enhancement Grant Program application deadline is just around the corner—October 23, and I’m always excited to see the kind of stewardship initiatives we can support with up to $2,500 for non-profits and $500 for individuals. The projects come in a wide range, and support our local wildlife, which makes our Fraser River Estuary (despite the pressures from development) a Wetland of International Importance and an Important Bird and Biodiversity Area. If this is news to you, then gather your neighbours and friends together for an eco-event and submit your request for the City to cover some of the costs through this grant.

In closing, my gratitude to all of you who provided natural spaces for wildlife habitat and who grew food this year. Eat it, share it, or sell it, but as the Chinese proverb suggests, life begins the day you start a garden. For being part of nature, let’s celebrate this week outdoors.