On May 6 and 7, École Olds High School will be hosting a conference for UNESCO-associated school delegates.
The vast majority will be representing 13 schools from across Alberta, but EOHS UNESCO-associated schools network coordinator Bev Toews says representatives of a school in Mexico and one in Saskatchewan are also expected to attend. In total, she says about 95 people are expected to take part in it.
UNESCO stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
"The education officer from the Canadian Commission for UNESCO will be here," Toews says.
The conference will be held in the TransCanada Theatre, the multi purpose room and the commons.
"We're calling it Learning From the Language of the Land and the Lives of Others," Toews says.
"The purpose is to kind of connect students and teachers of the UNESCO-associated schools and network in Alberta and in Canada; to just share what we're doing and learn more about some of the priority that we have through that.
"So the area of study we do is intercultural learning, global citizen education, education for sustainable development. And reconciliation is one of our priorities now too."
Toews says the focus will be on diversity, including the cultures of Indigenous people.
"We are going to be incorporating fair trade; it's a fair trade event. We will have fair trade coffee, tea and sugar," she says.
"We're focusing on repurposing, so instead of giving people conference delegate bags, we have made bags out of T-shirts. We're making our journals for them out of recycled paper. And everybody's going to get a bamboo utensil set and we're making little bags for them out of the leftover T-shirt fabric."
Toews says the conference is an excellent opportunity for students to learn and build many skills.
"It's awesome. We've had some leadership conferences and this is the second UNESCO conference we're having, and so it really builds capacity in our students and so that's one of the reasons we really like to have these conferences," she says.
Toews highlights some of the steps taken to focus on sustainability and repurposing of items.
"The environment club has made all the name tags out of cereal boxes and hemp string.
"A sewing class has made 36 of the bags as part of their sewing project. One of our work experience students has stamped all the bags with our conference logo on (them) in the art class.
"The fair trade committee of course is helping (provide) the fair trade products and the Interact Club is making dinner on Monday.
"The leadership class is going to be helping with the actual event and the Grade 9 leadership class is going to be doing icebreakers," she adds.
The themes of environmental and social sustainability are reinforced by the items conference attendees get — and don't get.
"We're giving bare minimum things to kids," Toews says. "Some conferences you go to, you get a whole bunch of things that nobody really uses in their bags and another backpack that they probably don't need, so the bags will be useful for groceries and a good idea for what students can do in their own schools.
"We'll be using our real plates, we'll be using as little garbage as possible in our lunches, in our meals, and fair trade brings in the environment and the social sustainability. We're supporting local businesses and local food producers.
"We really like to be an example to other schools as well, to show them that you can put on a conference and keep all of those ideals in mind and follow them," she adds.
Organizers began inviting schools to participate last June, then began putting it all together last fall.
