The Suzuki Elder Education and Community Engagement Working Group in collaboration with the DSF and our other working groups have hosted several salons and workshops that fall under the broad category of E4: Elder Environment Education Experience.
We believe that our experiences should be useful in helping you to organize and host your own salons or workshops, measure the outcomes from these sessions, and provide educational materials such as tool kits and pamphlets to participants.
Salons are gatherings where people talk in a way that is meant to be listened to and perhaps passionately acted upon. Salons are incubators where ideas are conceived, gestated, and hatched. They can be frontiers of social and cultural change.
Please click on the following links to find material useful for hosting your own workshops or salons on the following topics, and to find links to recommended reading:
- Your Health and Climate Change. Organized by Suzuki Elder Eva Wadolna, this report covers a workshop (30 attendees) held on May 4, 2018, and a Salon (90 attendees) held on June 7, 2018. The goals were “To obtain grass-roots input from older adults living in Vancouver of their perceptions of the impact on personal/family health and public health of climate change, and to probe their expectations of the responsibility of the various government agencies for prevention, adaptation and mitigation.”
- Women’s Participation and Leadership in Climate Solutions. Organized by Joanna Ashworth at Simon Frazer University on June 21, 2018, Suzuki Elder Erlene Woollard was invited to participate, and an extensive report was produced by the organizing group. The day-long gathering generated ideas that will inform and inspire action among all who desire to reduce the causes of climate change.
- Perils of Apparel: The environmental impact of what you wear: Information from a Suzuki Elder salon held in Vancouver on April 5, 2018 and also at the Vancouver Science Centre on May 11, 2018. Organized under the guidance of Patricia Plackett and the Education and Community Engagement Working Group.
- Going Out Green: Information about end-of-life options for “natural” burials. Material organized under the guidance of Simon Wheeler and the Non-Partisan Advocacy Working Group, and soon to form the basis of a salon.
- Talking to Younger People About Climate Change: Information from a Suzuki Elder salon held in Vancouver on March 1, 2018, organized under the guidance of Diana Ellis and the Education and Community Engagement Working Group.
- Inter-generational Story Project: A description of the use of story-telling as a way to help bridge the gap between elders and youth in how they perceive and react to climate change. Includes links to Suzuki Elder stories, a video prepared by youth based on some of these stories, and suggestions on how to form your own story-telling group.
- Building Resilience to the Impacts of Climate Change: Information relevant this topic has formed the basis for several Suzuki Elder salons organized under the guidance of Don Marshall and the Education and Community Engagement Working Group.