Sometimes issues are brought to government by some of its tiny, yet mighty citizens.
Last Sunday 7-year-old Jordyn Carter noticed garbage in and around Hays Creek close to the Civic Centre and decided she had to do something.
Jordyn and her brother play hockey. The family spends several hours at the Civic Centre so it’s often a second home on the weekends and she’s naturally a bit territorial.
After telling her grandma, Colleen Pudsey, she was sad about the garbage, Jordyn decided to write a letter to her teacher and to the Mayor asking for money so her class of 19 students at Westview School could take the bus down to the Civic Centre with their teacher to pick up garbage.
Grandma typed the letter, word for word in Jordyn’s prose, and read it back to her.
“She said it the way she wanted to and I typed it, that’s all I did. This is all on her,” her Grandma said.
Walking alongside the creek on a recent afternoon, Jordyn pointed out garbage and said she’d noticed it even while riding in the car with her mom.
“It’s under the bridge and over there and over here,” she said pointing down to the grass by the creek and along the edge.
One of the main reasons Jordyn is upset about the litter is for the safety of animals such as deer and fish that frequent the area.
“If people throw garbage it hurts the animals and then the trees and the plants,” she said.
In her letter, Jordyn wrote that she saw people littering, felt bad and wanted to say things.
Her teacher, Wil Barrow, was amazed when she gave him his copy of the letter.
“I was happy to see her thinking that way and my brain was putting things in motion, but I wanted to let her think about it,” Barrow said.
The class learned about the letter yesterday and will be planning a field trip for after spring break.
Barrow has his Class 4 license and could drive a school bus, but has decided that Jordyn’s request for City Transit tickets is the route she wants to take and because the City has said “yes”, that’s what they’ll do.
Mayor Jack Mussallem told Council March 14 he’d had a visit from Jordyn when she hand delivered her letter and was also impressed.
“Jordyn is a shy little girl who has some great ideas and is community minded. I actually got to meet her. It was a one-sided conversation, but she hand delivered me the letter,” said the Mayor with a smile.