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Monday 8:30am - 3pm Tuesday 8:30am - 3pm Wednesday 8:30am - 3pm Thursday 8:30am - 3pm Friday 8:30am - 3pm

Awaken Education - SD22, 2301 Fulton Road, Vernon, BC (2026)

10/03/2026

Over the past week, our community members have been guided by Ruth Slob through an immersive theatre experience.

Ruth is a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria whose work explores relational ecological identity through applied theatre. At the heart of her work are some fascinating questions about how we understand and relate to the more-than-human world — and how theatre might help us imagine perspectives beyond our own.

She has introduced us to the idea of seeing the world through more-than-human eyes, including the concept of Umwelt — the idea that every living creature experiences its own unique perceptual world. The same forest, wetland or grassland can be a very different place depending on whether you experience it as a human, a bat, a snake, an owl or an insect.

Community members have taken part in a variety of theatre activities, while also learning about the different aspects that go into creating a theatre production — movement, character, sound, story, staging and collaboration.

Each person has chosen an animal that can be found in the Okanagan Valley and explored the ecosystem it lives in, the challenges it faces, what it needs to survive, and importantly, how it experiences the world around it.

The goal isn’t simply to learn about an animal, but to explore what it might mean to see, hear, move through and experience this place as that animal.

So much learning in the process — ecology, animal behaviour, research, theatre, creativity, collaboration and a different way of thinking about our relationship with the other species that share this place with us.

We’re excited to see where Ruth and our community take it next!

Soo cool!

09/29/2026

This afternoon, we walked with intention as we reflected ahead of tomorrow’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

On our walk to Canoe Beach, we talked with a partner about what truth and reconciliation means to them, their relationship with the land, past experiences that have shaped their thinking, and what actions they might carry forward.

At the beach, everyone found their own space to sit, listen, observe and reflect before coming back together in a circle to share.

The conversation moved through residential schools, intergenerational trauma, empathy, experiences with Indigenous knowledge keepers, relationships with the land, and simply appreciating time to be. Others noticed the sounds of the water and gulls, the low lake level, and continued development on the surrounding hillsides.

The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is one day, but truth and reconciliation is ongoing. Today was another opportunity to listen, reflect, learn and consider our responsibilities moving forward.

09/28/2026

We’ve got a pretty exciting opportunity coming up this October.

From October 13–16, we’ll be heading into the Rockies for a field study based at the University of Calgary’s Barrier Lake Field Station in Kananaskis.

Barrier Lake is a working research and education station, and its focus on experiential, inquiry-based science makes it a great place for us to spend a few days. We’ll be getting out into the surrounding landscape, using field equipment, collecting data, exploring the ecology of the area, and learning about some of the research and long-term studies currently happening at the station and across Kananaskis.

With streams, wetlands, forests of different ages, fire-affected areas and big changes across elevation, there’s a lot to explore — from forest succession and disturbance to water, fire and how these mountain ecosystems change over time.

We’re also adding a pretty special stop on the way. On October 13, we’ll spend a couple of hours in Field, BC, with palaeontologist David Moore from the Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation, learning about the Burgess Shale and the remarkable fossils that tell the story of life more than 500 million years ago.

It’s a chance to spend a few days immersed in a very different landscape, experience science happening in the field, and meet some of the people doing the work.

This should be fun… cool cool!

If you’d like to help support opportunities like this for our learners, come out to one of our fundraising events or consider making a donation. Cheques can be made payable to Fulton Secondary School, with “Awaken Program Donation” in the memo line.

Thanks to everyone who continues to support our crew and help make experiences like this possible.

09/28/2026

Awaken Community Campus 2026 🌿

What an incredible two weeks.

Community Campus grows from a simple belief: our community can be our campus, and learning can happen everywhere.

We want our crew to know where to go when they need support, who to connect with when they are curious, and how to become involved if and when they choose. By introducing them to the spaces, places, people, ideas, and opportunities within Vernon, we hope those connections will continue beyond Community Campus and outside of class time.

Over eight days, we walked through Vernon, explored its natural and built spaces, entered organizations we may not have otherwise known, listened to people’s stories, asked questions, and learned more about the systems and people that keep our community going.

We explored art, science, sound, water, research, media literacy, artificial intelligence, politics, municipal elections, community planning, employment, volunteering, housing, transportation, public spaces, and support services. We spoke with people in stores and on the streets, listened to their hopes and concerns, and became more familiar with the places, people, and nuances of Vernon.

None of this would have been possible without an extraordinary community of people willing to share their time, knowledge, stories, spaces, and enthusiasm.

A huge thank-you to:

* Ken Hardie for helping us explore politics, values, respectful disagreement, candidate platforms, and participation in democracy—and to 97.9 Valley FM for bringing local election conversations to the community.
* The People Place for welcoming us and providing space to gather.
* The Okanagan Science Centre and Heritage Hall, along with Sam, Keven, and Dion, for sharing their knowledge, history, programming, and wonderful spaces.
* The Vernon Community Arts Centre, Karin, Charlie, and the whole team for encouraging creativity and generously giving each member of our crew a membership and art drop-in pass.
* The Okanagan Regional Library and Brielle, Stephanie, and Sierra for helping us become stronger researchers, question information, recognize bias, use AI thoughtfully, and discover everything the library offers beyond books.
* The Schubert Centre, including manager Dania and Clara—the wonderful and dedicated volunteer who showed us around—for teaching us about community, connection, volunteering, and the many programs and people that keep the Centre thriving.
* M.L. and the team at WorkBC for showing us the employment supports, workshops, resources, and opportunities available in our community.
* Naaz and Amanda from the Social Planning Council for inviting us to think about safe spaces, belonging, younger voices, and what may still be missing in Vernon.
* Ryan, Shashi, Monica, Chris, and Becky for helping us understand Vernon’s wastewater reclamation and drinking-water systems—and the knowledge, maintenance, planning, and care required to keep them operating.
* Ash for helping us slow down, observe closely, create, and experience familiar places in new ways.
* Every local business, organization, community member, and person on the street who paused to answer a question, share a concern, offer an idea, respond to an email, make an introduction, or help us find our way.

Community Campus is an invitation to understand our community by being present within it—and to recognize that learning, support, knowledge, opportunity, and connection exist all around us.

Our hope is that these introductions encourage more young people to return to these places, use the supports available to them, pursue their interests, volunteer, participate in community life, and share their voices.

It truly takes a village to raise informed, curious, caring, and engaged citizens. Over these two weeks, Vernon showed up for our crew in a remarkable way.

Community Campus 2026 may be complete, but Awaken will continue learning in and alongside our community throughout the year.

If you or your organization would like to be part of Awaken Community Campus 2027, please email [email protected]. We would love to keep building this network of learning, support, curiosity, participation, and connection.

09/24/2026

Day 8 of Awaken Community Campus 🌿

Our final day focused on bringing together what we had learned about Vernon and the upcoming municipal election.

Over the past two weeks, our inquiry groups explored their own values, spoke with community members, researched local issues, examined candidate platforms, and considered how municipal decisions affect everyday life. Today, each group shared its learning, big ideas, and remaining questions.

Several common themes emerged: affordable housing, responsible densification, transit, accessibility, road safety, water conservation, aging infrastructure, urban sprawl, green spaces, support for unhoused community members, places for teens to gather, and better communication between the City and the people it serves.

The groups also recognized how connected these issues are. Housing affects transportation. Growth places pressure on water and infrastructure. Neighbourhood design influences whether people can safely walk, cycle, or use transit. Communication affects whether residents understand decisions and feel invited to participate.

Some of the questions that emerged included:

* How can Vernon improve communication with residents, particularly younger people?
* How can transit become more frequent, affordable, reliable, and better connected?
* How should Vernon create more housing while protecting natural areas and ensuring infrastructure can support growth?
* How can our streets become safer and more accessible for walkers, cyclists, wheelchair users, and transit riders?
* How can Vernon support unhoused community members with dignity?
* What can the City do to create more free or affordable gathering places for teens?
* How should Vernon prepare for drought and future water shortages?
* How can Vernon become a place where younger people can imagine finding meaningful work and building a future?

Each presentation was followed by questions and constructive feedback. We discussed how to communicate clearly, connect evidence to our values, share speaking roles, remain focused, and respectfully respond when someone sees an issue differently.

The crew will now refine some of these questions to share with Ken Hardie, who may bring them to council and mayoral candidates during interviews on 97.9 Valley FM. There is something pretty powerful about seeing an idea move from a conversation on the street, through research and group discussion, and potentially into a public election conversation.

Day 8 was about sharing our voices, listening to one another, and recognizing that becoming informed does not mean having every answer. It means knowing how to ask thoughtful questions, seek reliable information, remain open to other perspectives, and participate in the community around us.

09/22/2026

Day 7 of Awaken Community Campus 💧

Day 7 was all about water. With Greater Vernon currently under Stage 3 water restrictions, we wanted to better understand where our water comes from, where it goes after we use it, and what it takes to keep these essential systems operating.

We met at Fulton for our morning check-in, then walked to the Vernon Water Reclamation Centre and Spray Irrigation Program, where Ryan and Shashi welcomed us and shared their paths into the water industry. We learned about the Water Engineering Technology program in Kelowna and the wide range of careers connected to drinking water, wastewater treatment, environmental monitoring, laboratory work, technology, and infrastructure.

The reclamation centre receives roughly 12 million litres of wastewater each day. We followed its journey through screens that remove items that should never have been flushed, grit removal, settling tanks, biological treatment, clarification, and ultraviolet disinfection.

One of the biggest surprises was learning that billions of bacteria do much of the treatment work. The operators create the conditions those microorganisms need to break down waste and remove nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Much of the job involves understanding biology and chemistry, monitoring the system, maintaining equipment, and responding calmly when something goes wrong.

We also learned why toilets and drains aren’t garbage cans. Wipes, hygiene products, clothing, grease, sand, coffee grounds, and other materials can damage equipment, block sewer lines, and create major problems throughout the system.

Vernon’s reclaimed water system is especially interesting because most of the treated water is pumped to MacKay Reservoir and reused for irrigation. It supports agricultural land, golf courses, nurseries, parks, and other green spaces. During this year’s water shortage, the City expanded the use of reclaimed water to support additional agricultural irrigation—a powerful example of adapting existing infrastructure to conserve drinking water.

In the afternoon, we travelled to the Duteau Creek Water Treatment Plant, where Chris and Becky helped us follow the another of the water cycle: how water from the watershed becomes safe drinking water.

We learned how water enters the plant by gravity before moving through screening, chemical treatment, dissolved air flotation, ultraviolet light, and disinfection. Along the way, instruments continuously monitor factors such as pH, temperature, turbidity, and chlorine levels.

A repeated theme at both facilities was redundancy. Important parts of each system have parallel treatment areas, additional pumps, backup equipment, alarms, and on-call operators. If one component needs to be shut down or repaired, another can keep the system working and the water flowing.

We also saw how much preventive work happens behind the scenes. Operators regularly inspect equipment, clean treatment systems, test water, check instruments, replace worn parts, and service motors and pumps. Running these facilities involves far more than responding when something breaks. Much of the work is carefully planned to prevent a breakdown from happening in the first place.

The current Stage 3 restrictions made the learning especially relevant. Our drinking-water supply depends heavily on snowpack, rainfall, reservoir storage, and careful management. We heard that the restrictions have already created a noticeable reduction in water use. It was encouraging to learn that when households, farms, businesses, and governments adjust their behaviour, operators can see the difference throughout the system.

Summer demand can be many times higher than winter demand, so our everyday choices really do matter. We discussed reducing lawns, planting species suited to our dry climate, improving irrigation efficiency, and treating water as the limited resource it is. Small changes in individual behaviour, when repeated across an entire community, can create meaningful change.

This learning also connects directly to our municipal election inquiry. Understanding where our water comes from, how it is treated, what the infrastructure requires, and how growth and drought affect the system gives us more knowledge for evaluating candidates’ ideas. It also helps us develop stronger questions about conservation, development, agriculture, infrastructure, climate planning, and the decisions made by our municipal and regional governments.

A huge thank-you to Ryan, Shashi, Chris, and Becky for sharing their knowledge, stories, and workplaces with us. Day 7 gave us a much clearer picture of the infrastructure our community depends on, the skilled people working behind the scenes, and the role each of us can play in caring for the water that sustains our community.

09/21/2026

Day 6 of Awaken Community Campus 🌿

We began with check-in at Polson Park, then walked to Heritage Hall at the Okanagan Science Centre for our second conversation with Ken Hardie. Ken is a former Member of Parliament whose career has also included broadcasting and public communications. He now helps lead Vernon’s 97.9 Valley FM community radio station.

Ken started by bringing us back to our political compass results. We talked about what the different positions might tell us about our values, while recognizing that a person’s views can change depending on the issue and the circumstances. Where we land on a chart is only the beginning of a conversation.

We also explored why political conversations can become so difficult. Ken talked about the pull of political “teams” and how online algorithms can keep showing us ideas we already agree with. That led to a bigger question: how do we stay open to evidence and other perspectives, especially when an issue matters deeply to us?

Using topics such as AI regulation, transit, water, and support for people experiencing homelessness, we practised looking beyond a quick opinion. Who is affected? What could different levels of government actually do? What might a proposal cost, and what other priorities would it affect? Ken helped us see why thoughtful decisions require us to ask more than whether we agree with an idea at first glance.

As the municipal election approaches, we’re also learning how to find information about candidates, examine their proposals, and talk about local issues with family, friends, and neighbours. Ken encouraged us to listen respectfully to people with different priorities and to remember that getting involved can begin with paying attention and asking a good question.

After lunch, we met in our inquiry groups to put those ideas to work. We looked back at the issues we’ve noticed while walking through Vernon and the stories community members have shared with us. What concerns keep coming up? Which ones do we want to understand better? We talked about the values behind our own views and considered why someone else might see the same issue differently.

We also made room for what we don’t know yet. Where could we find reliable information? Who else should we listen to? What can a municipal council actually do? From there, we began shaping questions we hope to ask election candidates—questions that invite them to explain their priorities, their plans, and the choices they would make when priorities compete. Then we headed back into the community to listen and learn some more.

Thank you, Ken, for giving us so much to think about, and thank you to the Okanagan Science Centre for welcoming us into Heritage Hall. We’re also grateful to everyone in Vernon who has stopped to share a thought or a story with our crew. Each conversation adds something to our understanding—and gives us a better question to carry into the next one. That’s how we learn.

#97.9valleyfm

09/19/2026

Day 5 of Awaken Community Campus 🌿

After our morning check-in at Polson Park, we headed to the Vernon Community Arts Centre and divided into two groups. One explored drawing with pastels, while the other experimented with cutting, arranging, and creating.

We are incredibly fortunate to have a place like the Arts Centre in our community. To encourage our crew to continue creating and connecting beyond Community Campus, the Arts Centre generously gave each person a free one-year membership, valued at $35, along with a ten-visit pass for its Paint and 2D Art drop-in sessions, valued at $100. What an amazing invitation to stay involved!

In the afternoon, we toured the amazing Schubert Centre and learned about the many people, programs, and volunteer efforts that keep it thriving. With five staff members and approximately 123 volunteers ( Wow), the Centre offers a thrift store, cafeteria, recreational activities, social gatherings, event spaces, and many opportunities for people to connect. Although much of its programming focuses on older adults, the Schubert Centre welcomes the entire community.

We also learned that volunteering can be a valuable way to gain experience, build confidence, meet people, and contribute to the community. It was especially neat that Lucy, a member of our Awaken crew, volunteered in the thrift store throughout the summer!

After our tour, one group met with Naaz and Amanda from the Social Planning Council for the North Okanagan in the Schubert Centre’s Ruby Room. The Council works with residents, community organizations, and different levels of government to identify local needs, connect people with resources, encourage collaboration, and help build a more caring and inclusive community.

Naaz and Amanda invited us to think about the places in Vernon where we feel safe and enjoy spending time, as well as the spaces we wish our community had. We also considered whether younger voices are being heard when decisions are made about Vernon’s future.

Another group visited WorkBC in the Community Futures building. We learned about the support available to people looking for work, including employment advisors, workshops, job postings, hiring events, résumé support, computers, printing, and opportunities to connect directly with employers.

Day 5 brought the heart of Community Campus to life: knowing where to go when we need support, who to connect with when we’re curious, and how to become involved if we choose.

It was a great day of hearing people’s stories, discovering local resources, feeling more confident navigating our community, and learning about the caring people and welcoming spaces that help Vernon thrive.

09/18/2026

Sharing a few more heartfelt creations from Day 3 of Awaken Community Campus with our wonderful mentor and community member, Ash! 🌿

09/17/2026

Day 4 of Awaken Community Campus 🌿

We met again at Polson Park for our morning check-in before dividing into two groups and heading out into the community.

One group visited the Okanagan Science Centre, where Keven led us through an exploration of sound and waves. We learned how sound begins with a disturbance, travels through a medium, and reaches us through vibrations in the air.

Through demonstrations involving guitar strings, sounding boxes, beat frequencies, and the Doppler effect, we explored how pitch, frequency, vibration, and movement affect what we hear. We also examined an old mechanical record player and considered how sound has been recorded and shared through different technologies over time.

Keven also shared the history of the Okanagan Science Centre and how it came to be. He has been part of the Science Centre since 1990—what an incredible community educator and local icon! His knowledge, stories, and long connection to the place made the experience especially meaningful.

Another crew headed to the Vernon Community Arts Centre for a session with Charley about slowing down and learning to see the world differently. Using photographs of ordinary objects and scenes as inspiration, they explored line, shape, colour, shadow, texture, and the beauty found in imperfection.

The goal wasn’t simply to produce a finished piece of art. It was to begin developing a practice of observing closely, expressing ourselves, and finding inspiration in the world around us. As one of our notes from the morning put it: “You don’t do art wrong. Art is about growth and learning.”

A huge thank-you to our friends at the Vernon Community Arts Centre and the Okanagan Science Centre for sharing their knowledge, passion, and incredible programming with us!

After lunch, we returned to Fulton to have our annual Awaken photos taken before turning our attention back to the upcoming municipal election.

We looked at our political compass results and considered where each of us fits. The goal wasn’t to label anyone or find a “correct” position, but to better understand our own values and recognize the range of perspectives within our community.

Back in our municipal-election inquiry groups, we began connecting our values with what we have been noticing and hearing throughout Vernon. We identified the issues that matter most to us and started shaping questions we hope to share with the people seeking a seat on city council.

From exploring how sound travels and how art changes the way we see, to considering how our values influence the questions we ask, Day 4 reminded us that learning often begins by paying closer attention.

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Monday	8:30am - 3pm
Tuesday	8:30am - 3pm
Wednesday	8:30am - 3pm
Thursday	8:30am - 3pm
Friday	8:30am - 3pm