York

ClimateWise Business Network is excited to be in Year 3 of a partnership with Faith & the Common Good to deliver the energy benchmarking program to the York Region community. I wanted to share our journey to date.

As an independent K-12 school located in Richmond Hill, Holy Trinity School (HTS) proves to be an aspirational leader when it comes to educating, promoting and advocating for sustainability. After joining ClimateWise Business Network in June 2018, HTS has participated in Faith and the Common Good’s Energy Benchmarking for Faith Buildings program and they are currently in the process of creating an action plan to achieve their greenhouse gas reduction goal. In May 2019, Holy Trinity School received recognition for their commitment to sustainability as they received an award for Engaged Green Team at ClimateWise’s York Region Sustainability Awards.

The Jaffari Community Centre is a proud member of ClimateWise Business Network. The organization is currently participating in Faith & the Common Good’s energy benchmarking program.

The Jaffari Community Centre’s sustainability journey demonstrates how passionate people can impact the way a community acts on climate change. A few like-minded women were the forerunners of a sustainability movement that effectively shifted the way community members think and act. Their “Eco team”, which started five years ago with a grass roots approach to reducing waste is now a fully integrated eight-member Eco Board, working to improve the Centre’s overall sustainability method.

Faith & the Common Good recently launched an energy benchmarking program and Toronto Hydro and Enbridge Gas Distribution are assisting us in the City of Toronto. Hamilton, Halton, Peel, and York regions are also participating in this program.

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Climate change. It’s worse than we thought. That was the message we heard from the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, Dr. Dianne Saxe, who joined us on three separate occasions over the past months — a June event in Hamilton and September events at Church of the Incarnation in Oakville and the Jaffari Community Centre in Thornhill.