The Upper Grand District School Board is celebrating 30 years of its Community Environmental Leadership Program (CELP).
The first CELP program was started in 1995 by Centennial Collegiate Vocational Institute teacher Mike Elrick. Today, CELP programs are run by Centennial CVI, Norwell DSS and Wellington Heights SS and are available to students from schools in those communities from Grades 10 and 11.
These programs are, to the best of our knowledge, the longest running Interdisciplinary Programs with an environmental focus in Ontario. They have been featured as best-practice in Ministry of Education curriculum documents.
Programs are run off-site at partner locations, including the University of Guelph Arboretum, Wellington County’s site in Luther Marsh, Conestoga Lake, Grand River Conservation Authority, and the Town of Minto. Each site offers the opportunity for students to step into a close-knit community for the semester, appreciate nature through a wilderness trip, and foster an understanding of local and global environmental issues and action.
The four-credit, semester-long model allows for rich partnerships with community organizations. Students might learn urban biking skills, lead stations at a Groundwater festival for kids, band birds, plant trees for watershed management, visit waste, agricultural and power facilities, electrofish with conservation authorities, build garden boxes, harvest veggies and more. Students also gain an appreciation for an active lifestyle within the natural environment by participating in hiking, camping, snowshoeing, canoeing, rock climbing, and cross country skiing, to name a few.
Additionally, these programs have acted as informal and cost-effective outdoor education centres for 30 years providing thousands of elementary students with an outdoor and environmental education experience each semester, as secondary students learn and teach programs such as Earthkeepers, Ducks Unlimited Wetland Centres of Excellence, Climate Crew and EcoStars.
To celebrate this milestone, we are looking for previous CELP students from all three programs to share their pictures and stories with us on Facebook. Please visit this page to share your stories: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ww.celp.info
An in-person reunion is also being planned for the Guelph CELP and Headwaters Programs for May 2, 2026. Watch the CELP 30 Facebook page for details!
To get information on the current programs, please see the links below:
CELP Guelph
Instagram: celp.program
WHSS CELP: https://sites.google.com/ugcloud.ca/whss-celp/home
Norwell CELP: https://www.ugdsb.ca/o/ndss/page/celp
MEDIA CONTACT:
Katie Gad