You can cast votes to help hatchery win $10k award
Mossom Creek Hatchery is getting a helping hand from some Heritage Woods secondary students in a bid to win a BC Hydro Community Champion award.
The students, all in Grade 12 at the Port Moody school, managed to script, film and edit a video for the environmental group’s award submission, and in that the whirlwind effort over just six days, came to respect the work of Mossom volunteers.
“It’s crucial for a community to be vibrant to have places like these to enrich life here,” said Ethan Volberg, who produced the video, with Pierce Kinch narrating and Graeme Lyon helping write the script and do other tasks.
Lyon and Kinch had volunteered at the hatchery before and recently helped collect pink salmon eggs at Tenderfoot Creek near Squamish, and Volberg was a relative newcomer to the Port Moody hatchery and education centre.
But while he shot the video, Volberg said became impressed with the work and the way it encourages young people to learn about the environment. Now, he hopes the video will help the group win a $10,000 BC Hydro Community Champion award so it can continue to do this work.
“As a kid, I enjoyed learning about nature but [making the video], I was struck by all these amazing things going on in our community.”
He hopes that members of the public will visit champions.bchydro.com and vote for the Mossom video, as the group is one of 15 finalists. Voting continues until Nov. 30.
(There’s also a special opportunity for students who participate in the Community Champions video project. If they vote for one of the videos and state why, they could be eligible for $1,000 grant for a school project.)
Tracy Green, president of the Burrard Inlet Marine Enhancement Society, is proud of the video and the young men who produced it, saying they represent the next generation of environmentalists who use tools such as video to make a positive change in the world.
“It’s pretty impressive. They have such a connection with outdoor education and the hatchery that they get it,” Green said, adding that if it wins, BIMES will use the funds to do more environmental education geared to young people.
With the Mossom video complete, the three Heritage Woods students are now working on another project, a 48-minute documentary about Karl Ricker, a glaciologist and naturalist — and family friend — who has been documenting the retreat of Wedgemount and Overlord glaciers in Whistler.
“It’s our goal to shed light on these environmental issues,” Volberg said.
