2012 Annual Report

The Gaia Project 270 Rookwood Avenue Fredericton, NB E3B 2M2 1 (506) 442-9030 www.thegaiaproject.ca contact@thegaiaproject.ca

The Gaia Project Our mission is to empower youth to make critical and informed decisions about energy and its impact on the environment, both today and in the future. We do this by collaborating with teachers and students throughout New Brunswick, in both the Anglophone and Francophone educational systems. We develop and deliver projects, provide professional development, technical support and ongoing project support. Everything we do incorporates our three key principles of realistic environmentalism: 1. Data-Informed Decisions We want students to be able to explain why, and quantify the effect of each decision they made along the way to their final solution. Economic Assessments We expect students to be able to assess the cost effectiveness of their solutions, and be able to optimize their projects with limited budgets. Environmental Impact and Lifecycle Assessments We need students to take a holistic view to their projects. This means looking at their projects from cradle to grave, as opposed to just examining the use phase, and acknowledging that greenhouse gas reduction is not the only environmental issue at stake. Staff Members Brian McCain
Executive Director

Board Members Jake Arsenault George Dashner Krista Downey Debbie Good Nick Russon

2.

3.

2012 has been a year that we are immensely proud of, and we will continue to build on our successes in 2013. If you have any questions about the work we are doing, or want to get more involved with our organization, please get in touch. Regards,

Joanna Nickerson
Administrative Officer

Vanessa Paesani

The Gaia Project

Program Delivery Officer Anglophone Sector

Brian McCain Executive Director The Gaia Project 270 Rookwood Avenue Fredericton, NB E3B 2M2 Office: Cell: Email: 1 (506) 442-9030 1 (506) 292-8928 brian.mccain@thegaiaproject.ca

Elaine Savoie
Agente des programmes ducatifssecteur Francophone

Jimmy Therrien
Agent des programmes ducatifssecteur Francophone

Canada Revenue Agency Registered Charity:

BN 80415 7618 RR0001 www.cra-arc.gc.ca/charities The Gaia Project www.thegaiaproject.ca

The Gaia Project2012: A Year in Review The Gaia Project has just celebrated our 4th year in existence and our most successful year to date. It was just four years ago that our Executive Director, Brian McCain, conceived of The Gaia Project and piloted its first project at Carleton North High School, while building the Mobile Energy Center. Based on the positive feedback received during the first year, The Gaia Project has grown to 4.5 employees that reached over 3,000 students last year, from across New Brunswick, in both the Anglophone and Francophone public education systems.

2012 Annual Report

I have served as a volunteer on The Gaia Projects Board of Directors for the past 1.5 years after retiring from 30 years work in the Energy Management and Renewable Energy industry. During my working experience, I grew to understand that our resources were finite and that through their consumption, we were rapidly changing our environment. I knew that solving this problem would require everyone to make some adjustments to their lifestyle - not an easy task. Lifestyle adjustments take a long time, and I believe this has to start with our youth. When I heard of The Gaia Projects approach of engaging students in real and relevant projects at their schools, using realistic environmentalism, I was sold.

Over the past couple of years, I have enjoyed the feedback The Gaia Project team has brought back about how the students effortlessly take on these real world challenges and how they work to resolve them. Our efforts have not been missed, and over the past two years we have worked with students who have won a Premiers Award for Energy Efficiency, as has our Executive Director, and have been developing partner relationships with sponsors at both the local, provincial and national scales.

We have hard-working and dedicated staff, enthusiastic students, and a very willing Department of Education, but none of what we have accomplished would have been possible if we had not received significant financial and moral assistance from our sponsors. To this end, I would like to sincerely thank every sponsor we have had over the past four years. Thank you for taking the time to listen to us, for reading our proposals, for attending classes with us, connecting us to other potential sponsors and for significant financial assistance. We are very proud to display your companys or organizations logo.

I look forward to working with you in the future, and to expand the impact this organization is having in New Brunswick.

George Dashner Chairman, Board of Directors

The Gaia Project www.thegaiaproject.ca

The Gaia Project

The Gaia Project, founded in 2009, is a charitable (BN804157618RR0001), not-forprofit organization dedicated to empowering youth to make informed and critical decisions about energy and the environment through educational projects. Over the years, our programs have changed based on the constant feedback we receive from students and teachers. Today we offer a range of innovative and engaging project opportunities for students to help them make informed decisions about energy and its impact on the environment in both official languages throughout New Brunswick. We have had students win Premiers Awards for Energy Efficiency, groups present directly to the Minister of Education and the Director of Facilities for New Brunswick schools to lobby for efficiency improvements, and tearful exchanges between students and teachers who had gone far beyond what they had ever thought they were capable of. It is these experiences that assure us we are on our way to achieving our mission.

deliver professional development, as and when needed, from both a technical perspective as well as a classroom management and assessment perspective. Developing successful projects can be a timeconsuming task. Our main focus is to ensure that teachers and students can hit the ground running with success.

Curricular Sustainability Planning

In a sustainability planning project, students create a baseline inventory of consumption at their school by developing a specific question about sustainabilityenergy, waste, water, transportation or foodat their school and then researching this in-depth.

Project brainstorming at Fundy High School

The Gaia Project

Our Approach
The Gaia Project believes in staying closely involved with the schools, teachers and students with whom we work. Our involvement with a project doesnt end the day a project starts, but instead continues well past the end of a given project to ensure its sustained impact over time, both at the school, and in the community. The Gaia Project works closely with teachers to

Students use this baseline inventory to develop SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely) solutions to any issues uncovered through their audit. Recommendations are coupled with economic assessments of their solutions, and life cycle assessments that look at the cradle-to-grave impact of their decisions to match our philosophy of realistic environmentalism. The sustainability plan is a multi-year project, with subsequent classes building on the

The Gaia Project www.thegaiaproject.ca

information obtained in the years previous. Student-led solutions have included:

We are currently on track for meeting our 20122013 target of:

staggering the start-up of the HVAC system in the mornings at Carleton North High School to reduce peak power demand, and also to eliminate an initial influx of cold air changing the default power setting on SMARTboards to Standard from High to save up to $100,000 a year in New Brunswick schools on energy costs, and a further $300,000 a year on replacement light bulb costs. implementing composting programs to reduce waste collection costs by $14,400 a year at Fredericton High School. Closing already installed curtains at night at one high school, which would result in a $24,000 calculated annual energy saving

30 high schools 30 elementary schools 5 middle schools

2012 Annual Report

Sustainability Teams
Because schools are fluid, and students and teachers change regularly, Sustainability Teams offer continuity for managing a sustainability plan at a school on a long-term basis. These teams are composed of all relevant stakeholder groups: administration, students, teachers, custodians, support staff, parents and community representatives.

The Gaia Project is currently facilitating curriculum-based sustainability planning at all levels within the public education system:

Recycling bins purchased at Fredericton High through their Sustainability Team

Elementary: waste audits Middle: energy and water audits High: energy (plug-in loads, heating, lighting), water, waste, transportation and food audits/ Sustainability Teams have three levels, and use the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely) goal setting model:

Solutions arising from curriculum-based sustainability planning will be managed by the schools Sustainability Team. During the 2011-2012 school year, The Gaia Project team facilitated projects at:

Bronze: team has made a commitment to examining and managing the environmental impact of the school Silver: identified priority areas and set SMART targets Gold: implementing both short- and longterm sustainability targets and are actively monitoring and managing these solutions.

23 high schools 9 elementary schools 7 middle schools

At the time of this report, The Gaia Project has

The Gaia Project www.thegaiaproject.ca

worked to establish 24 Sustainability Teams at Anglophone and Francophone schools throughout New Brunswick, and is on track to establish 35 teams by the 2013-2014 school year.

storage systems, or testing different methods of insulation.

Realtime Utility Monitoring

Realtime energy and water monitoring technologies (both hardware and software) have been developed in-house by The Gaia Project to give students immediate feedback on their buildings power and water consumption, as well as historical views of consumption data. This allows students and staff to set and track daily targets as opposed to waiting for the end of the month to analyze their performance. For a list of schools with currently installed realtime utility monitoring, please consult our website at the link below: http://www.thegaiaproject.ca/data/realtimelocations

Solar thermal panel construction and testing

Mobile Energy Centre

The Gaia Project tours with an innovative Mobile Energy Centre (MEC). The MEC is a 4-m long trailer that contains several pieces of interactive alternative energy equipment to give students a hands-on learning experience with alternative energy. The Mobile Energy Centre program is a 2-day program that includes both hands-on activities, as well as in-classroom learning about electricity production and consumption. Topics covered include:

The environmental, economic, and social costs and benefits of different power generation options How behaviour and consumer choices impact our power generation decisions. SMART grid shifting the energy sector from a purely demand response to model to one that actively tries to reduce and shift demand in addition to generation.

The Gaia Project

Screenshot of Realtime Utility Monitors

Sustainable Building Challenge

In these projects, students work to design, test and improve various elements of building technologies in order to make data-informed building choices. Projects include testing solar and wind technologies to assess the technical and economic feasibility of taking a building off grid or net zero, designing and building their own renewable heating and heat recovery /

The trailer includes:

500-Watt wind turbine 175-Watt solar panel Solar thermal panel Pumped hydro

The Gaia Project www.thegaiaproject.ca

Bicycle generator

In the 2011-2012 school year, the Mobile Energy Centre visited:

E3 has been, without a doubt, the most empowering professional development opportunity of my teaching career thus far. - Shannon Lavigne

2012 Annual Report

Saint John High School, Saint John Fundy High School, St. George James M. Hill High School, Miramichi Riverview High School, Riverview cole Samuel-de Champlain, Saint John Hampton High School, Hampton Rothesay High School, Rothesay St. Stephen High School, St. Stephen Harbour View High School, Saint John cole Mathieu-Martin, Dieppe Bonar Law Memorial High School, Rexton cole Sainte-Anne, Fredericton

Feedback
As part of our ongoing process to improve our programs, The Gaia Project has conducted pre and post-program interviews with students and teachers. Some of the feedback we have received is recorded below: It was the course that best prepared me for my engineering courses at Queens this year - Former student, Carleton North High The most I have seen my buddy come to class in the 13 years we have been going to school together - Student, Sussex Regional High School I had kids coming to class, who werent even coming to school before - Teacher, Tantramar High School

Contact Us
The Mobile Energy Centre fully deployed at Fredericton High School

E3: Peer Group for Teachers

August 2012 saw the launch of a partnership between The Gaia Project and the Wallace McCain Institute to offer a peer group to support teachers who are implementing experiential, project-based learning in sustainability in their classrooms. This group is called E3: Excellence in Experiential Education/ Excellence dans lducation Exprientielle. Feedback from current cohort: The Gaia Project www.thegaiaproject.ca

We would love to chat with you about any of our projects, and hear your feedback and ideas. The Gaia Project team thanks you for your support, and look forward to hearing from you! www.thegaiaproject.ca contact@thegaiaproject.ca 1-877-442-4136 For ongoing updates on what The Gaia Project is up to, you can follow us on our social media accounts: www.facebook.com/gaiaproject www.twitter.com/gaiaproject

Fiscal Year 2012: Statement of Operations

Expenditures by Category Charitable programs Fundraising Administration & management TOTAL

$ $ $ $

Amount 192,914 3,164 28,477 224,555

Expenditure Type Advertising Travel Bank Charges Office Supplies Office Training Staff Compensation Donated Goods Program Supplies and Equipment Amortization Other TOTAL

$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

Amount 132 32,084 265 2,244 11,927 306 140,926 14,213 8,233 10,816 3,409 224,555

The Gaia Project

Income Source Provincial government Federal government Corporate Individuals Foundations Gifts-in-kind Interest Tax Rebates TOTAL

$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

Amount 86,368 30,000 26,640 55,665 11,500 14,213 44 3,482 227,912

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The Gaia Project www.thegaiaproject.ca