Student Independent Projects Environmental Studies 2011: Creating Federal Policies to Support Environmental Education in Canada.

Environmental Education is an essential component of childhood education and can play a vital role in the development of positive environmental attitudes, community involvement and environmental awareness. One of the main challenges faced by Canadian educators is the lack of support and funding to fully engage and participate in Environmental Education programs that are locally available. To better understand the viewpoint and challenges of educators and Environmental Education programs, this paper includes an interview series with three Environmental Education leaders, followed by a discussion section on significant commonalities. Through the research of peer-reviewed literature, federal documents, and environmental networks, this research paper aims to interpret the development and challenges of K-12 environmental education in North America as well as to review the established programs, networks, and resources availble to Canadian educators.

WONCA Rural Medical Education Guidebook

We are very excited to launch the WONCA Rural Medical Education Guidebook at the 12th WONCA World Rural Health Conference, Gramado, Brazil. The roots for the Guidebook go back to 1992 when a very important meeting was held on the sidelines of the WONCA Global Family Doctor conference in Vancouver, Canada. At this meeting an interested group of rural practitioners saw the need for WONCA to develop a specific focus on rural doctors. As a result, the WONCA Working Party on Rural Practice (WWPRP) was formed. The group set about producing a visionary roadmap for rural medical education in the form of a seminal document, the WONCA policy on Training for Rural Practice 1995. This was followed four years later by further recommendations made in a companion document, the WONCA policy on Rural Health and Rural Practice 1999, which was revised in 2001.