Toronto

Guest blog by Sajeda Khan, Social Services Coordinator

The Faith & the Common Good community garden project is an amazing project. To begin, the excitement of sharing our sacred spaces was marvellous, especially for common ground.

The senior volunteers and gardeners were looking forward to spring and their favourite hobby is to plant plants, especially native plants and vegetables. 

We began with planting the native plants.

Monarda Fistulosa is a wild flower in the mint family, widespread and abundant. It is a native plant of North America. It’s also known as bee balm.

Echinacea Purpurea, commonly called purple coneflower, is a coarse, rough –hairy, herbaceous perennial that is native to most prairies.

Asclepias turnerosa, commonly called butterfly weed, is a tuberous rooted, Missouri native perennial which occurs in dry and rocky open woods, glades, prairies.

Energy efficiency work pays forward for Eglinton St. Georges’ United Church at no cost!

Eglinton St. George's United (ESG Toronto) received $50,700 funding this summer, in order to improve energy efficiency at their building. The total cost of the project was paid for by the funds received. The project is part of an 18-year ongoing greening journey at ESG.  

Shaarei Shomayim Garden

By Nicole Toledano

What am amazing garden we have thanks to the funding we received! Our beautiful garden is located right under our Torah scroll design, a symbol of our religion and our faith.

We would like to thank TD Friends of the Environment Foundation and Scotts Canada, and Faith & the Common Good for introducing us to this beautiful and successful garden project.

Holy Cross Parish 2020 Community Garden

By Bibi Berger, EcoMinistry Group

2020 was a surprising year to all to say the least.

“Lockdowns and social distancing” of the COVID 19 severely put a damper on the plans that the ministry had for the pollinator garden project. We were excited to add more native wildflowers to the garden but were able to add fewer than expected, due to plant shortages. Fortunately, our new and existing plants grew very well and provided quite an attraction. It was a good pollinator year for the bees and the butterflies whose activities were not at all affected by the virus.

Energy Benchmarking Program: Impact and Sustainability

by Donna Lang – September 24, 2020 

Faith & the Common Good’s (FCG) three-year-long Energy Benchmarking Program for the GTHA has come to an end. As Project Manager and Toronto Animator for the program, I greatly enjoyed working with our team of talented animators from Halton/Oakville, Hamilton, and York Region. Together, we surpassed our target of 100 faith communities (FC) for the grant period 2017-2020, with 103 participating congregations. 

  Site map of participating FC. 

As the strange summer of 2020 winds to a close, our Grow Team is looking back fondly on the work that we’ve accomplished, the seeds that we’ve sown, and the community that we’ve built together in the gardens at Eglinton-St. George’s United Church. Over the past weeks and months, our team has been hard at work in the soil at ESG, working to foster the growth of not only fruits, vegetables, and flowers, but also of our own connections to our church, our faith, and our God. 

Faith buildings account for about 42% of a typical faith community’s carbon footprint, according to a Canadian National Inventory Report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.* With over 27,000  faith communities in Canada, the faith sector can do a lot to lower emissions, starting from their places of worship. Doing so also encourages congregants to follow suit at home. Energy conservation and efficiency is an obvious way to immediately reduce emissions and make a real impact.

As a start, it is useful to track energy usage, because you can’t change what you don’t measure. Over the last three years, FCG has been supporting faith communities to do just that, through our Energy Benchmarking program for faith groups. Now that the program is drawing to an end, this wrap-up blog offers insights to help your faith group tackle next steps in retrofitting. We will end with tips from one participant of the program.

We share insights from our Building Audit Manager, Stephen Collette. Stephen is a sustainable building consultant, and a heritage professional specializing in faith community buildings. He blogs at  http://www.yourhealthyhouse.ca 

Our Energy Benchmarking Program

Understanding your current energy use is the first step in reducing it. Launched in 2017, our Energy Benchmarking Program is helping faith communities take practical and economical climate action by lowering their energy use and emissions. 

The Energy Benchmarking program:

1. Supports stewardship of environmental and financial resources. 
2. It allows you to target carbon consumption (buildings account for about 42% of a typical faith community’s carbon footprint).
3. Saves time and money, allowing you to target the lowest hanging fruit. 
4. Assists future reporting requirements. 

View our Case Studies of the places we have worked with.

Soil of God, You and I

It’s harvest time in Toronto after a long and beautiful growing season. At Eglinton St. George’s United Church, we’re reminded of all the growth that has taken place in our community garden with each tomato that we pick and each leaf of lettuce that we pluck.