Students, professors and staff are invited to attend the first-ever Green Carpet event, featuring a visit by a world-renowned scientist, to St. Clair College on Sunday, November 3rd.
St. Clair students are playing a leading role to ensure that Windsor’s postsecondary students, professors and community members receive the extraordinary wisdom of recent scientific discoveries that will help them to feel not only deeply connected to trees and other species but empowered to take action to save our planet from climate change.
The Student Representative Council (SRC) has teamed with the Pelee Island Observatory to create an exciting Green Carpet event where the community can hear from world-renowned scientist and visionary Diana Beresford-Kroeger on Sunday, November 3rd at the Student Life Centre, from 7 to 9 p.m..
Her new book, "To Speak for the Trees", shares her journey as a child who became orphaned, was schooled in ancient traditional knowledge of the natural world, and led her to fascinating discoveries as a student and a scientist about the relationships between humans, trees, and other species. Pre-orders of the first edition of her book and tour events in other parts of Ontario have sold out.
The evening at the Student Life Centre will also feature a real green carpet setting where attendees can meet local heroes and organizations who are working to protect the environment, and purchase up-cycled products from a sewing collective and eco-art. Biblioasis will be selling Beresford-Kroeger’s books, and she will sign books following her lecture and Question and Answer session.
SRC President Kiara Clement sees the Green Carpet event as a chance for students to take ownership of a brighter future by learning about how they can make personal commitments to help the environment. “We have the power to create change and we need everyone to understand is how important the voices of youth are,” she said. “We are the discoverers, the leaders today for tomorrow. If we can learn from others and be present about the current environmental reality, we will feel more empowered to make small yet powerful changes together.”
The Pelee Island Bird Observatory is thrilled to be working with students and student volunteers to create a special evening creating a more positive response to recent news about climate change and the loss of birds and other species. “Once we learn and understand how we are connected interdependently to birds and trees and other species, it causes the division to become invisible,” explains Suzanne Friemann, Executive Director of the Pelee Island Bird Observatory. “Diana is a visionary who can helps us understand both why we need to stop harming birds through chemicals and destruction of their habitats and food sources, why they are vital links in our ecosystem, and simple things we can do that will help the birds, other species, and ultimately ourselves.”
Friemann hopes international and Canadian students and faculty members from many disciplines will be inspired to hear Diana’s inspiring message and work for changes to protect the ecosystem in their future careers.
Tickets for the Green Carpet event with Diana Beresford-Kroeger are available now at the SRC office, Biblioasis and online at Eventbrite (https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/a-green-carpet-event-with-diana-beresford-kroeger-tickets-72949067625). The event is just $5 for students and $10 for other adults.
Beresford-Kroeger is a botanist and medical biochemist who shares the scientific complexities of nature and reveals the intimate relationships between humans, trees, birds and other species. Her concept of bio-planning challenges ordinary people to develop a new relationship with nature, to view the environment as a biological system, and to perform the ecological task of replanting the global forest. Her books include “The Sweetness of a Simple Life”, “The Global Forest”, “Arboretum Borealis: A Lifeline of the Planet”, “Arboretum America”, and “A Garden for Life”. She was inducted as a Wings Worldquest fellow in 2010, as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2011, and in 2016 the Society named her one of 25 women explorers of Canada. A feature documentary about her work, "Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees", appeared in 2017.
To learn more about the Pelee Island Bird Observatory’s efforts to research, protect and educate about birds, visit www.pibo.ca
For more information about Diana Beresford-Kroeger, please visit http://calloftheforest.ca
