In March this year, Evelyn received a phone call from the Rotary Club of Ashcroft/Cache Creek telling her they were recognizing her as the Youth Citizen of the Year for all the volunteer work she’d done over the two previous years.

“It made me happy,” the grade 9 SelfDesign learner says about hearing the news.

Almost two years earlier, another friend, Ann McKague, had been looking for volunteers.

“We went to a local play production the year before last, and Ann was there volunteering.” Evelyn’s mom, Tova, says. “She was taking the tickets for the play, and she said, ‘I’m looking for volunteers for a couple of weeks from now to hand out goodies at the village’s Citizen of the Year ceremony.’ My girls were both there. They talked to Ann and said they would be interested in helping her.”

Evelyn and her sister volunteered, and they loved it. Then Ann told them about some gardening projects she needed help with. One of the projects was to plant gardens to help butterflies and other pollinators in the area.

“She said, ‘I was wondering if you were interested in helping?’ That’s how I got into that,” Evelyn says.

Planting butterfly gardens to help pollinators

The gardens Ann wanted to set up are part of the Butterflyway Project, a volunteer community science movement to plant habitat for bees, butterflies and other pollinators in neighbourhoods across Canada. The project, first initiated in 2017 by the David Suzuki Foundation, supports the creation of pollinator-friendly gardens in residential yards, school and business grounds, boulevards and parks. When 12 or more patches are established near one another in a community, a new butterflyway is born.

In the program’s first seven years, 7,200 habitat gardens have been planted in Canada, and 119 butterflyways, or networks of 12 or more habitat gardens, established.

Twelve of those gardens — creating one butterflyway — were planted by Evelyn, Ann and friends in planters, containers and boulevard gardens in and around Ashcroft. One of the gardens is in an old red canoe donated by a local resident.

Evelyn and the rest of the garden team planted seeds and seedlings of drought-tolerant perennials that are native to North America and provide blooms to attract and shelter pollinators — flowers such as marigolds, asters, joe pye weed, gaillardia, and more. They also planted some sunflowers, and Evelyn says they planted a few potatoes, too.

“She weeded; she planted; she watered and monitored,” Ann wrote in the nomination submission for the Youth Citizen of the Year. “She never wavered even when getting up early was required.”

Three days a week over the first couple of months after planting, Evelyn and her fellow volunteers would go around to each garden to water and weed them. Once the gardens were established, they continued monitoring the gardens.

“I had a bit of free time, and I found out I like gardening,” Evelyn says, who also rides weekly at a local stable, and makes and sells beaded pens through her Facebook page and at the local craft markets.

And when Ann was preparing to present the project to Ashcroft Village Council and mentioned that having a video about the project would be really helpful, Evelyn volunteered to do that, too. “Evelyn, and her friend Kaeli, built a moving and convincing video detailing the need for pollinator gardens in the area,” Ann wrote, “and then participated in a village council meeting to ask for village support.”

“The video is about one and a half minutes long, but it took them longer than that to make,” Tova says.

“It was a couple days, I think,” Evelyn says.

The young learner also volunteers to help prepare a weekly lunch, called Soup’s On, for anyone in the community who needs it at the local church.

Learning in community

All of this formed part of her learning. Tova would make a note of Evelyn’s activities and what she was experiencing and learning, and then would share that with their learning consultant, Amy, during their weekly Observing for Learning conversations.

“I am incredibly proud of Evelyn!” Amy says. “She is from a community-centered family that supports and loves Ashcroft. During her time at SelfDesign, Evelyn has grown her community work through volunteering and helping out where she can. The youth award focuses on the Butterfly Project, a hybrid of a social venture, a community-building activity and an environmental triumph for the area, and Evelyn has also been working weekly at a local community program called ‘Soup’s On!.’ It has been so thrilling to be her learning consultant, reading about how each week she is flexible and finds ways to help out, from serving food to cleaning and bussing tables.”

Amy says, “Evelyn stepped out of her comfort zone, appealing to the community, as well as rolling up her sleeves and doing the hard work needed. She has been building relationships with people of all ages within her home community, as well as ours at SelfDesign. I know her story of hard work, care taking and advocating for things that matter will be an inspiration for SelfDesign learners and learning consultants alike!”

Ann, who coordinated the butterflyway project in Ashcroft, has since moved away, and Evelyn and Tova aren’t sure whether the project will continue this year. However, now that she has discovered she enjoys gardening, Evelyn is working on her own garden in the family’s yard.

She has planted flowers – pansies, daisies, strawberries, poppies, carnations, and others.