Kara Kraus walks to school every day and she likes to encourage her classmates to do the same.
At Franklin Public School in Kitchener, Grade 5 and 6 students are part of the Trailblazers club. They encourage other students to walk or roll their way to school. On Tuesday, which is Earth Day, they’re promoting Walk for the Earth, an initiative that aims to get students out of vehicles and on their feet, bikes, scooters, skateboards or take other active forms of transportation to get to school.
Student Transportation Services Waterloo Region is encouraging parents, caregivers and students to Walk for the Earth on Tuesday, noting many people that drive their children to school drive less than one kilometre.
Leslie Maxwell, the school travel planning supervisor at transportation services, notes an average person can walk one kilometre in 10 minutes and can cycle one kilometres in under five minutes.
“Every step is a part of the solution,” Maxwell said in a media release about the initiative. “We hope that one day all children will be able to experience the benefits of walking or wheeling to school for part or all of their school journey.”
‘You can enjoy all the nature,’ student says of walking
Kraus says students don’t need to wait for Earth Day to take action.
“A lot of kids, including me, spend a lot of time on devices and things. And if you go to the car, chances are you’re going to be on your phone or something in the car or you’ll just be like not paying attention to the outside world and just be listening to the radio or something,” Kraus said.
“But I think it’s really important when you walk school because then you can enjoy all the nature and you can talk to people around you.”
She said she also likes volunteering and talking to the other students as they walk to school and it’s fun to inspire others. As part of the Trailblazers, she wears a bright yellow vest and she hopes other students see what she’s doing.
“They’re watching me while I’m walking and they’re maybe going, hey, maybe I should walk to school instead of driving every day.”
Other members of the school club, which is for students in Grades 5 and 6, say they also hope their actions inspire other students.
Patrick Adam said, “I wanted to do it to help people walk to school,” adding the exhaust from vehicles near the school “hurts kid’s lungs.”
Ruby Parks joined “because I love walking.”
“I just love seeing the nature and all, like, the animals,” Parks said.
Charli Kalau already walks to school daily already “and I just thought it’d be something that I could do to make sure more students are comfortable walking to school, too,” he said.
Kalau added walking is an important way to help the planet.
“You should consider taking care of the place that you live on and making sure that you’re not just polluting and things like that,” Kalau said.
‘It’s important that we think about everyone’
This is the second year Quinn Needham has been a Trailblazer. Needham says it’s good volunteer experience and a great way to enjoy being outside.
“It’s good to cheer people on when they walk,” Needham said.
“This is our Earth. This is where we live. And when somebody drives, it affects everyone, not just the person driving. So it’s important that we think about everyone and not just ourselves.”
It’s also Loreli Noseworthy’s second year being a Trailblazer. In her first year, she earned a speaker, which she thought was “pretty cool” but there were other important reasons to return to the group.
“It’s also good to walk for the Earth and not use all that gas because there are so many things that you want to save the Earth for,” Noseworthy said.Â
“If it’s not a good Earth, that’s not a great place to live.”
