Greening the Way Ontario Learns

EEON (Environmental Education Ontario) is a charitable status education organisation established in 2000 by a group of people passionate about promoting environmental education in Ontario.  The aim of the organisation at that time was to enhance environmental learning within the formal education system as well as in other key societal sectors in Ontario.  In the early years, EEON focused on building an active EE network in Ontario and consulting with hundreds of representatives from across a broad range of public sectors on how to improve EE within their respective areas. In 2003, their recommendations were synthesized into a broad-based, action-oriented document, Greening the Way Ontario Learns: a public strategic plan for environmental and sustainability education which paved the way for improving the quality, scope and status of environmental learning in the province. This work helped EEON to become established as a key stakeholder in provincial efforts to integrate environmental education into the curriculum during the mid-2000s. EEON contributed to reviews of numerous provincial curriculum drafts and became a clearinghouse for information on environmental education. However, there remains much work to be done!  Pressing challenges such as the climate and biodiversity crises are far from being adequately addressed through education, and the field of EE urgently needs to become more inclusive to represent the diversity of the people of Ontario and Indigenous communities.