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Sidra Tahir has a message for everyone this holiday season: Your days can be merry, bright –and energy efficient.

The Grade 5 student from William G. Davis Public School in Windsor, Ont., illustrated this message in the winning this year's Ontario Power Authority seasonal greeting card competition. Sidra's colourful drawing of Santa flying through the night sky beat out hundreds of entries from students ages eight to 14 across Ontario.

"She's a top student and a phenomenal artist but she's also a wonderful writer and public speaker," says Nadia Barzotto, Sidra's homeroom teacher. She encouraged her students to sign up for the Power Authority competition as an optional assignment for their science unit on sustain-ability.

"We learned about conservation of energy in class and how you can conserve energy around the house and the different forms of energy," says Sidra, 10. "We had just finished the unit in science and my teacher told us about the competition. The reason I entered it is because I really love art and I really feel strongly about the planet and keeping it clean, so it brought the two subjects together and it was the perfect opportunity for me."

Ben Chin, the Power Authority's vice-president of communications, says Sidra's design was very well-composed and had a wonderful theme to spread the message of conservation in Ontario.

"She gets it," he says. "I think it has to do a lot with her school and her family as well — but I noticed in the school there was a real effort in recycling there. The kids are involved in conservation with electricity, turning the lights off, that sort of thing, and they do it in a way that celebrates it. That's what the culture of conservation is all about and I think she captured that."

In fact, William G. Davis is one of the province's certified EcoSchools, a program designed to incorporate environmental education and environmentally responsible action in the schools.

"The motivation for conservation is a school-wide thing here," Ms. Barzotto says.

Sidra's message will reach many because the winning design is used as the Power Authority's greeting card for this holiday season. As well, it is being featured in the agency's reception area and is displayed along with the drawings of the 11 runners-up in the competition at The Children's Museum in Kitchener, Ont.

On Dec. 4, Mr. Chin presented Sidra with a glass trophy that includes an image of her card as well as a $200 honorarium and a 64-inch smart white board for her classroom.

"I felt really good when I won the smart board and I made so many people happy, including myself and my teacher," Sidra says.

Mr. Chin also spoke to the school's students about what they can do to use less electricity and distributed some of the educational material the Power Authority has developed for youngsters, including a booklet called Kids' Corner. (Parents and children can check out the agency's educational and fun site for kids at http://kids.everykilowattcounts.com)."It's extremely important that we teach children about the culture of conservation — but maybe the children can teach us as well," Mr. Chin says. "Children often lead and motivate us as adults to do better when it comes to using the earth's resources more wisely. Also, they are the adults of tomorrow. Hopefully, we are the sum total of all the great things our adults passed on to us when we were growing up. Those things we know about climate change, conservation, cleaner forms of electricity, all of those things we are aware of today, we have an obligation to pass on to our children."

And these are exciting days to be doing that in Ontario, which is leading the way in a remarkable transformation with the most aggressive conservation targets in North America — the equivalent of removing one in five users from the grid by 2025, Mr. Chin says.

"By closing down all our coal plants by 2014, we are helping to create a cleaner platform of electricity and by leading in renewable energy, all of this is creating a cleaner energy platform moving forward," Mr. Chin says. "And that will have a beneficial domino effect throughout all of our industrial processes, right down to plugging in our vehicles one day and all the things that come with that will further reduce emissions down the road — and that's the world that Sidra and her generation are going to inherit."

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.