Organization: St. George Rainway Project
Undertaking a groundbreaking effort to reimagine Vancouver’s approach to being the Greenest City, the St. George Rainway Project team is made up of a passionate team of local residents who are artists, educators, storytellers, designers, business people, and knowledge keepers who have given thousands of hours bringing this work to life.
While the project is expected to begin construction next year, the project has its roots in more than a decade of grassroots work involving partnerships, events, workshops, and design charrettes that have served to help people across the city imagine an alternative vision to ever-expanding miles of pavement.
The team has generated widespread community participation through activities as varied as community parades, student-led street murals, and annual events such as Mount Pleasant Days, leading the St. George Rainway plan to be adopted as part of the Mount Pleasant Community Plan in 2013.
With a final design concept in place and budget allocated for the construction, the Rainway will use natural systems to capture and clean rainwater and increase green space in the city. Perhaps an even bigger accomplishment by the team is helping thousands of Vancouverites to better understand, and become advocates for, green infrastructure, urban nature, and sustainable transportation.
This collaborative approach will also serve as a prototype for other similar Rainways across Vancouver, modeling how we can better manage rainwater using natural systems, while also delivering other benefits such as improved health, livability, biodiversity, and access to nature.
The Rainway project dovetails with our Rain City Strategy, setting goals of converting 40% of impervious space to pervious by 2050.
Individual: Sophia Yang
For Sophia Yang, attending the 2019 United Nations climate negotiations (COP25) as a youth delegate was a watershed moment. It was that experience that led her to launch a youth-led non-profit called Threading Change, an organization she says is guided by the six Fs: a feminist, fossil-fuel-free, fashion future.
For Sophia, Threading Change is about raising the voices of youth in one of the industries the world is coming to realize is a significant polluter through its fast fashion approach. Her holistic perspective on the protection of our environment comes from her commitment as “a dedicated climate justice changemaker,” with Sophia having worked for more than a dozen environmental organizations ranging from federal government agencies, such as Natural Resources Canada and Parks Canada, to NGOs like Nature Conservancy of Canada and SPEC (Society Promoting Environmental Conservation) to industry CNRL (Canadian Natural Resources Ltd), and academia (UBC and SFU).
Sophia is a recipient of several distinguished awards, including:
- Corporate Knights' Canada's Top 30 Under 30 Sustainability Leaders (2021)
- Starfish Canada's Top 25 Under 25 Environmentalists (2017 and 2018)
Beyond her deep environmental commitment, Sophia wears many other hats, working as a community organizer, fashion justice activist, equity consultant, and entrepreneur while also moonlighting as techno-DJ 'KALEIDO' in her spare time.
As Executive Director of Threading Change, she’s well known in the climate and sustainability space, using her ethical fashion organization to focus on the intersections of climate, gender, and racial justice to change the ways in which we view and engage with our clothing, and aligning these behaviours towards a transition to a circular economy.
Youth: Rachel Dong
Rachel Dong jumped into environmental leadership at a young age, becoming involved with the Vancouver School Board Sustainability Conference as a grade 9 student at Eric Hamber Secondary. Now the chair of this group, she leads and mentors a team of 30 students who share her goal of raising environmental awareness and fostering the next generation of climate advocates.
Rachel has also worked diligently to reduce the environmental impacts of food waste while serving as Club President of Kitchen on a Mission since 2020. The group developed partnerships with bakeries and homeless shelters across Vancouver to form an end-of-day food program, diverting over $30,000 worth of unsellable food from going to waste, and supporting at-risk communities in the Downtown Eastside.
With Rachel’s compassionate leadership, the group expanded to over 100 members, enabling them to extend their services to five days a week. Rachel is also actively involved with the Ocean Wise YouthToSea program, volunteering monthly with her peers to prevent hundreds of pounds of litter from entering the ocean through shoreline cleanups. She continues to lead remarkable community engagement projects, including co-authoring an 80-page sustainable living cookbook to promote ocean literacy and healthy food choices. Rachel and her team went one step further, distributing the cookbooks, along with grocery hampers, to seniors at a time when they were most vulnerable.
With the pandemic leaving many individuals and small businesses heavily impacted, Rachel has empowered and inspired her community, helping those experiencing food insecurity and extreme poverty back on their feet.
