The Ecology School
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The Ecology School
The Ecology School is a non-profit environmental education program started in 1998 in Saco, Maine. The Ecology School, located in Saco, Maine, is an innovative school for students of all ages to learn by their natural inclinations—engaging all five senses to discover the inner workings of the world around them. Through hands-on, experiential programming students learn to become stewards of the environment as they explore local forests, coastal ecosystems, and food systems. In everything they do—leading single-day and residential programs; teaching outreach programs at schools; running camps; and publishing original curriculum and field guides—The Ecology School accentuates the magic, mystery, and wonder of nature so students can better understand and care for the environment. The Ecology School has hosted more than 185,000 students and teachers from across Maine and New England since its inception in 1998. Staff also travel to regional and national conferences and summit ...
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Non-profit
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in contrast with an entity that operates as a business aiming to generate a profit for its owners. A nonprofit is subject to the non-distribution constraint: any revenues that exceed expenses must be committed to the organization's purpose, not taken by private parties. An array of organizations are nonprofit, including some political organizations, schools, business associations, churches, social clubs, and consumer cooperatives. Nonprofit entities may seek approval from governments to be tax-exempt, and some may also qualify to receive tax-deductible contributions, but an entity may incorporate as a nonprofit entity without securing tax-exempt status. Key aspects of nonprofits are accountability, trustworthiness, honesty, and openness to eve ...
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Environmental Education
Environmental education (EE) refers to organized efforts to teach how natural environments function, and particularly, how human beings can manage behavior and ecosystems to live sustainably. It is a multi-disciplinary field integrating disciplines such as biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, earth science, atmospheric science, mathematics, and geography. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) states that EE is vital in imparting an inherent respect for nature among society and in enhancing public environmental awareness. UNESCO emphasises the role of EE in safeguarding future global developments of societal quality of life (QOL), through the protection of the environment, eradication of poverty, minimization of inequalities and insurance of sustainable development (UNESCO, 2014a). The term often implies education within the school system, from primary to post-secondary. However, it sometimes includes all efforts to educate the public a ...
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Saco, Maine
Saco is a city in York County, Maine, York County, Maine, United States. The population was 20,381 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. It is home to Ferry Beach State Park, Funtown Splashtown USA, Thornton Academy, as well as General Dynamics Armament Systems (also known by its former name, Saco Defense), a subsidiary of the defense contractor General Dynamics. Saco sees much tourism during summer months due to its amusement parks, Ferry Beach State Park, and proximity to Old Orchard Beach. Saco is part of the Portland, Maine, Portland–South Portland, Maine, South Portland–Biddeford, Maine, Biddeford, Maine Portland-South Portland-Biddeford metropolitan area, metropolitan statistical area. Saco's twin-city is Biddeford. History This was territory of the Abenaki tribe whose fortified village was located up the Sokokis Trail at Pequawket (now Fryeburg, Maine, Fryeburg). There was a settlement at the mouth of the Saco river, with homes and permanent cultiv ...
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Food Systems
The term food system describes the interconnected systems and processes that influence nutrition, food, health, community development, and agriculture. A food system includes all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population: growing, harvesting, processing, Food packaging, packaging, transporting, Agricultural marketing, marketing, consumption, Food distribution, distribution, and disposal of food and food-related items. It also includes the inputs needed and outputs generated at each of these steps. Food systems fall within agri-food systems, which encompass the entire range of actors and their interlinked value-adding activities in the primary production of food and non-food agricultural products, as well as in food storage, aggregation, post-harvest handling, transportation, processing, distribution, marketing, disposal, and consumption. A food system operates within and is influenced by social, political, economic, and environmental contexts. It also requires hu ...
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Sustainable Living
Sustainable living describes a lifestyle that attempts to reduce the use of Earth's natural resources by an individual or society. It is referred to as zero wastage living" or "net zero living". Its practitioners often attempt to reduce their ecological footprint (including their carbon footprint) by altering their home designs and methods of transportation, energy consumption and diet. Its proponents aim to conduct their lives in ways that are consistent with sustainability, naturally balanced, and respectful of humanity's symbiotic relationship with the Earth's natural ecology. The practice and general philosophy of ecological living closely follows the overall principles of sustainable development. One approach to sustainable living, exemplified by small-scale urban transition towns and rural ecovillages, seeks to create self-reliant communities based on principles of simple living, which maximize self-sufficiency particularly in food production. These principles, on a broade ...
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Living Building Challenge
The Living Building Challenge is an international sustainable building certification program created in 2006 by the non-profit International Living Future Institute. It is described by the Institute as a philosophy, advocacy tool and certification program that promotes the measurement of sustainability in the built environment. It can be applied to development at all scales, from buildings—both in new constructions and renovations—to infrastructure, landscapes, neighborhoods, both urban and rural communities, and differs from other green certification schemes such as LEED or BREEAM. Intention The end goal of the Living Building Challenge is to encourage the creation of a regenerative built environment. The challenge is an attempt "to raise the bar for building standards from doing less harm to contributing positively to the environment." It "acts to rapidly diminish the gap between current limits and the end-game positive solutions we seek" by pushing architects, contractors, an ...
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Education In Maine
Education in Maine consists of public and private schools in Maine, including the University of Maine System, the Maine Community College System, private colleges, and secondary and primary schools. Department of Education The Maine Department of Education (DOE) administers public education in the state. It is run by a commissioner appointed by the governor. It concerns itself with academics. It does not concern itself with what public school staff does to their students. Local municipalities and their respective school districts operate individual public elementary and secondary schools but the DOE audits performance of these schools. The DOE also makes recommendations to state leaders concerning education spending and policies. Primary and secondary schools Education is compulsory from kindergarten through the twelfth grade, commonly but not exclusively divided into three tiers of primary and secondary education: elementary school, middle school or junior high school and ...
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Environmental Education In The United States
Modern environmental education in the United States began to take shape in the late 19th century with the Nature Study movement, which grew out of efforts to promote the field of natural history by naturalists including Harvard professor Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) and Anna Botsford Comstock, whosHandbook of Nature Studywas published in 1911. Definition At the International Environmental Education Workshop led by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) held in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1975, environmental education aims were established: “The goal of environmental education is to develop a world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the environment and its associated problems, and which has the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations and commitment to work individually and collectively toward solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones.” History Early h ...
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Nature Centers In Maine
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena. The word ''nature'' is borrowed from the Old French ''nature'' and is derived from the Latin word ''natura'', or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". In ancient philosophy, ''natura'' is mostly used as the Latin translation of the Greek word ''physis'' (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics of plants, animals, and other features of the world to develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socr ...
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Buildings And Structures In Saco, Maine
A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory (although there's also portable buildings). Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and functions, and have been adapted throughout history for a wide number of factors, from building materials available, to weather conditions, land prices, ground conditions, specific uses, monument, prestige, and aesthetic reasons. To better understand the term ''building'' compare the list of nonbuilding structures. Buildings serve several societal needs – primarily as shelter from weather, security, living space, privacy, to store belongings, and to comfortably live and work. A building as a shelter represents a physical division of the :Human habitats, human habitat (a place of comfort and safety) and the ''outside'' (a place that at times may be harsh and harmful). Ever since the first cave paintings, buildings have also become objects or ...
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