Youth Led Environmental Action Recognized with WWF Canada Award
In 2025, students who participated in a research collaboration supported by the Faculty of Education and the Surrey School district were awarded the Graeme Loader Community Panda Award by WWF Canada. The award recognizes outstanding community-based contributions to conservation and honours collective action. This national recognition highlights the impact of our faculty-led research and affirms the significance of students’ contributions to environmental care and community engagement.
Matthew Waugh, the Senior Manager of Research and Evaluation at Surrey Schools, shared,
It was wonderful to see the students becoming social agents for change and doing their part to heal the planet. This entire effort demonstrates how school-community collaborations can move climate education beyond awareness into meaningful action.
The award emerged from a participatory action research project led by Dr. Cher Hill, Doctoral Student Neva Whintors, and Dr. Ching-Chiu Lin, which engaged elementary students in outdoor learning, digital storytelling, and place-based environmental care. While the research was formally documented in the peer-reviewed journal article I Hate the Global Warming Factory! Caring for Tadpoles During the Climate Emergency, its broader impact extended beyond publication through student-led action in the community.
In the WWF announcement video, Dr. Cher Hill shared what the recognition meant for the children and those who supported them:
I was so happy and so excited for the kids. So Neva Winters, their teacher. And Elder Rick tell them all the time, what you do matters, your voice matters, your actions matter. But I felt like this award really validated what we’ve been saying—that what you do matters!
Katzie First Nation Elder Rick emphasized the intergenerational importance of the students’ work, stating:
it’s the future. It is the generations to come that … are our future. I don’t want to lose it.
Over the past year, students translated their research learning into public action. They organized a school-wide film festival titled How to Fall in Love with the Forest, participated in outdoor lunchtime programs, and helped care for tadpoles that were jeopardized when the weather became unseasonably warm and their pond began to evaporate. Through these activities, the children became motivated to protect tadpoles and produced films addressing climate change and local ecological issues. The children, however, expressed a desire to take further action and proposed producing multiple films to help the broader community better understand the impacts of global warming. A central focus of this work was learning from Elders about the challenges salmon and other beings face as climate change disrupts waterways and migration routes.
Students’ reflections further illustrate how participation in research shaped their sense of responsibility and agency. One student reflected:
One small person, one small change–it can lead to a gigantic difference.
Another student added:
I, just a small child in a big world, made a small difference that could make a big change, and I’m pretty sure you can too!
Together, these voices point to a broader understanding of what research impact means. In this project, impact is evident in children’s actions, in relationships formed with Elders and community members, in public events that mobilized learning outcomes, and in national recognition by WWF-Canada. The research extended beyond publication into lived practice, shaping how young people see themselves as capable contributors to the world.
The WWF Canada award highlights this expanded meaning of impact. It shows how faculty research can meaningfully shape learning environments that move outward into communities, fosters intergenerational knowledge sharing, and enable children to act on what they learn. In recognizing the students, the award affirms that research impact is not only limited to measurable outputs such as citation counts and other research metrics, but is also enacted, experienced, and sustained over time.
We extend our congratulations to the students, educators, Elders, and researchers whose collaborative work made this achievement possible.
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