Recruitment & Marketing

Staff recruitment

Our staff were always folks who were student focused and problem solvers. Our auxiliary staff almost always had skills or knowledge that added to what we were doing. Almost all were grads of teacher colleges, choosing to be teacher aides in order to share in the unique Bronte Creek experience. We had aides who had lots of outdoor skills and experience, others with science backgrounds, some with drama and music skills and all were interested in being part of an integrated outdoor program.

Personal qualities needed to set up and operate any multi-dimensional organization such as this would at least include the following:

• A commitment to follow a vision, persistence

• Joy of working with young people

• Enjoyment of the challenge of problem solving

• Willingness to delegate

• Commitment to transformative experiential learning

Student recruitment

Most courses in education don’t actively recruit, allowing enrolment to just happen through school course selection processes. We realized early on, the importance of a more direct approach, for a non-mainstream program such as ours. Our students generally were good at spreading the word back at school but we took that a little further. We would have one of our program grads volunteer in each school to be our representative. These reps would arrange and publicize a meeting and one of our staff would show up with a powerpoint show and pamphlets. This led to a steady increase in enrolment for years.

We did much the same at the elementary schools. We arranged to visit school staff meetings and do a presentation with PowerPoint and pamphlets in hand. Once schools experienced our programs they tended to return each year. We got to the point where many of our high school students had gone through our Earthkeepers program, while in grade five. We even eventually had several of our high school students hired as teacher aides. A perfect self promoting loop.