Promoting a culture of agency and engagement, Earth Day and every day

At Royal Roads University, Earth Day is every day, everywhere, all at once.  The university is promoting a strong culture of agency, connection-building, collaboration and engagement in climate action and sustainability. The focus is not just to increase awareness but also to build relationships, capacity and collective resilience in unique ways. 

Monthly Resilience and Reconnection circles to support a deeper practice of kinship, (un)learning and perseverance have emerged at RRU. These spaces explore climate complexity, relational accountability, decolonization and entanglement. Professor and ecopyschotherapist, Hilary Leighton, facilitates the Resilience and Reconnection Circle, an honest and hopeful gathering of faculty and staff to acknowledge and process emotions related to a world in polycrisis.  Whether it is the climate emergency, political polarization, or biodiversity loss, we can face these issues in ways that builds courage, acceptance, inner strength, and greater connectedness with one another.  The climate complexity circle builds off the work of Dr. Vanessa Andreotti, Dr. Sharon Stein, and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective, fostering a deeper response to modernity, polarization and the harmful patterns at the root of the climate and nature emergency. 

RRU’s Healthy Plant Club’s grassroots engagement, offers regular and ongoing opportunities for the university community to learn about local ecosystems and how to support them.  The club offers hands-on, action-based stewardship sessions from invasive plant pulls to forest bathing sessions.  Last year over 175 participants joined in, and the hope is to engage even more this year in connecting with nature and each other.

Growing good things through food and medicines. The Farm at Royal Roads expanded in 2024 and now includes the Giving Garden, an Indigenous Medicine Garden and a Market Garden. Through continued partnerships with community organizations and volunteers, the Farm has created meaningful opportunities for more than 2,000 people within our community to engage with nature. At almost 70,000 square feet, this is a prime location for hands-on engagement and place-based learning opportunities for university students as well as local school children. The Indigenous Medicine Garden and broader Farm also offer tangible spaces for sharing Indigenous Knowledges and decolonizing curricula. Produce helps supports food security for university students and area residents, with a special emphasis on growing culturally important crops.

Building capacity for Climate Resilience. In 2024, Royal Roads University conducted its first climate risk assessment taking an equity-based and holistic approach that involving community members in identifying key concerns and resilience building pathways.  RRU is a recognized leader in climate resilience; it offers a robust suite of programs related to climate action leadership, sustainability, adaptation and disaster and emergency management. Initiatives like CanAdapt, the Climate Action Competencies Framework, and upskilling micro-credentials, the university is playing a strong role in national capacity building initiatives. The Cascade Institute engages in research and programming to address the world’s urgent problems, including the climate emergency. 

Climate Week programming catalyzes creative energy and community empowerment. The second annual event held in November 2024 brought together students, faculty, leaders and the public for learning and activities focused on transformative change, creative resilience, placemaking and action. The week also featured the unveiling of a collaborative community art project União: collective action for our planet.

Earth Day at Royal Roads truly is every day. It is woven into the fabric of our programs, our operations, and our community engagement. We continue to learn, grow and expand our efforts as we contribute to climate action and climate justice. 

Learn more about RRU Earth Month events and activities.