Meet Our Volunteers

Great things don’t just happen on their own. It takes a team of dedicated volunteers to help make Sustainable Cobourg awesome. These passionate individuals give up their time every day to help the community and us. The next time you see one of these people, make sure you stop and tell them just how much you appreciate what they’re doing and ask what you can do to help.

Sustainable Cobourg Volunteer Team

Click image to view bios.

Brenda Ferris

VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR

Jonathan Brown

GIS COORDINATOR

Jane Doe

VOLUNTEER

Jane Doe

VOLUNTEER

Brenda Ferris

VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR

brenda17ferris@gmail.com

Brenda moved to Cobourg. in 2020. She worked as a Registered Nurse for over 20 years in variety of hospital and community settings prior to starting an engineering consulting business in 1992 which is still active today.

Brenda has had an interest in Sustainability ever since initiating the first recycling program in Baie d’urfe on the Island of Montreal. She was also part of a group which who help enact a law banning pesticide spraying in residential areas.

Brenda set up the infrastructure of a new program for Emergency Response in the Health field. Recruiting and managing over 60 volunteers and promoting the program through public presentations and marketing. She was the President of a Citizens Association and recruited and trained volunteers for a number of significant town public functions.

In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, biking, yoga, writing, painting and spending time in nature with family and friends.

Jonathan Brown

GIS COORDINATOR

jbrown@sustainablecobourg.ca

Jonathan has been a Sustainable Cobourg volunteer since 2019. He likes to work with young people on applied research projects and outdoor education projects. He is responsible for the SC projects that use the Geographical Information System (GIS) suite of tools in ArcGIS Online.

To learn how we are using GIS for field work see our Brook Creek Sustainable Water Quality Study:

Brook Creek Sustainable Water Quality Study

Did You Know?

Adopting sustainable practices, whether large or small, can have significant impacts in the long run. If every office worker in the United Kingdom used one less staple a day by using a reusable paper clip, 120 tonnes of steel would be saved in one year.

So far in 2022, Depave Paradise has depaved 15 asphalt pavements! Since 2012 this group has completed 80 projects across 32 Canadian cities covering 76,384 square metres of unused paved surfaces into beautiful community green spaces with native grasses, flowers and trees. What an amazing sustainable action to capture carbon, a Greenhouse gas, and create a welcoming ecological ‘paradise’ for our monarchs and bees and of course, for us. Well done. This is a project of Green Communities Canada.

In 1993, the Convention on Biological Diversity put the precautionary principle to work.

In 1987, the Brundtland Report consolidated decades of work on sustainable development.

The First World Climate Conference happened in 1979 and opened up the science of climate change.

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." - Anne Frank