About

Climate Action Ripple Effect (CARE) is a student learning and community engagement program launched in 2022 in School District 22 (Vernon). It builds climate awareness and inspires action through innovative local solutions. Student project teams collaborate with mentors from all sectors to create diverse projects that support municipal climate plans and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

CARE is about people coming together to protect the planet and each other. We bring together diverse voices, knowledge, and skills to explore solutions that make our communities stronger and our world healthier. Every person’s contribution matters, and together we can create lasting change.

Rationale for CARE

Climate change is a serious and urgent challenge requiring mitigation and adaptation efforts by whole communities, including youth.

We know that a powerful antidote to climate anxiety is climate action, particularly for youth who simultaneously experience fear and powerlessness in a warming world, and who are inheriting the potentially devastating impacts of past decisions.

To honour youth and support them in deserving, respectful, and practical ways, we must provide the capacity-building opportunities they need to undertake well-informed, timely, and beneficial actions.

We must also help youth build a culture of climate action that will grow exponentially via the ‘ripple effect’ exemplified in CARE. And whether they choose careers in government, business, academia, trades, arts/culture, and/or the nonprofit sector, our aim to help them embrace the personal, educational, and vocational opportunities inherent in climate action, starting NOW!

Keen to CARE about kids and climate?

This is a great way to make a difference! Having different community components working towards the earth’s betterment doesn’t get much better than this.

Reach out today, we’d love to hear from you!

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Cornerstones of CARE

CARE is built on a strong foundation of five cornerstones that underpin all aspects of program and event design, delivery, evaluation, and refinement. These pillars set the stage for expansion of impact and reach.          

1. Collaborative Community Model

In keeping with what has evolved successfully since 2022, CARE’s overarching approach moving forward is a collaborative model that involves primary and secondary stakeholders within a community. They share strong, collective goals, plans, and capacities for student and community climate education, engagement, and action. 

Primary stakeholders include the school district, municipality, and any nearby post-secondary institutions. Secondary stakeholders include climate experts and professionals, along with environment and climate nonprofit organizations, climate-friendly businesses, and the public.

2. Transformative Learning Approach

CARE’s pioneering method incorporates emerging best practices from inquiry-based learning to build students’ climate awareness, agency, and action, while building curricular skills and personal strengths, passions, and capacities. Students work in small teams to create workable solutions for local real-world climate challenges.

3. Student & Community Engagement

Unique to CARE, and vital to its success, is the mentorship provided by community climate experts and advocates from all sectors and interests. These CARE-trained mentors and advisors share their climate expertise, ideas, passions, and networks to help students learn new skills, appreciate diverse world views, build self-confidence, and achieve quality outcomes.

4. Personal Connection & Impact

All CARE participants invest their personal blends of knowledge, skills, talents, and passions in the creation of CARE projects. This approach optimizes student and mentor interest and buy-in, while helping them build the world views and relationships needed to accelerate local climate action.   

5. Continual Evaluation & Refinement

In keeping with its commitment to continual improvement, CARE conducts annual surveys assessing participants’ experiences, impacts, successes, challenges, outcomes, and opportunities for refinement. CARE changes its programming and events significantly each year to reflect the feedback.

Our Team

CARE is the flagship program of the Fresh Outlook Foundation (FOF), a registered charity based in Vernon, B.C., whose passion is “inspiring community conversations for sustainable change.”

CARE is directed and overseen by the FOF’s Board of Directors in collaboration with the Core CARE Planning Team.

Joanne de Vries

Founder & CEO, Fresh Outlook Foundation / CARE Program Lead

Barry Dorval

CARE Education Lead

Jim Ryan

CARE Education & Technical Advisor

Kasey Van Sickle

CARE Mentor Recruiter & Social Media Coordinator

CARE History

2021

2015

The United Nations announced 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as blueprints “to achieve a more sustainable future for all.”

2021

2018

The City of Vernon struck a Climate Action Advisory Committee to guide development and implementation of the Climate Action Plan (CAP).

2021

The City adopted the Vernon Climate Action Plan. The concept for CARE was introduced in 2021 by a small group of dedicated teachers in Vernon, B.C., two of whom were members of the Action Advisory Committee.

Tasked with building awareness of the plan among local youth, the teachers believed that an in-class approach built on collaborative, cross curricular, project-based, and community-focused learning and problem-solving would help support local and global climate goals.

2022

The first round of CARE was held in 2022 with 120 School District 22 (Vernon) students creating 32 projects that were displayed at a community celebration of learning and climate action potential.

2025

In 2025, with School District 23 (Central Okanagan) on board, almost 1,000 teachers, students, mentors, judges, and exhibitors celebrated the creation of 211 projects. Comprehensive feedback outcomes show that CARE contributes to community climate action efforts, while building students’ skills, talents, passions, and capacities. It’s also helpful in fostering cultures of communication and collaboration among people from all sectors, generations, and cultures.

2026

CARE turns 5 in 2026, and continues to grow! We are now planning a pilot project in Delta that will showcase emerging inquiry-based learning tactics and tools in the design and delivery of CARE programs and events. Stay tuned!

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Fresh Outlook Foundation

CARE is delivered by Fresh Outlook Foundation.

FOF was established in 2007 by communications consultant Joanne de Vries, with support from a committed group of board members and volunteers who shared her passion for building sustainable communities in British Columbia, Canada.

The Fresh Outlook Foundation (FOF) envisions a future where people from all sectors, ages, cultures, faiths, abilities, and genders collaborate to make our communities healthier, happier, and more prosperous. This is possible only when people talk with one another about important community issues, challenges, and opportunities. To that end, the Fresh Outlook Foundation’s passion is “inspiring community conversation for sustainable change.”