Grace Holistic Center For Education Continues Environmental Focus

When Grace Holistic Center for Education was founded a decade ago, being green was on the
top of the list of things the school wanted to do that was different than what they were finding in
other educational institutions.
“This was the focus when we started,” Founder and Executive Director Tairi Grace said. “educating students on sustainability, decreasing our footprint, teaching kids to grow their own food and make their own food, and utilizing what the Earth provides us has always been at the center of our educational goals.”
And it wasn’t just in the philosophy of the school. There were real, hands-on experiences in the
classroom.
“We do upcycling; we make our own soap,” she said. “We bake, we cook, we have always had a
garden.”
As they enter their tenth year, they are revisiting that promise in more concerted way.

I want to make a greater impact in our community and even if it has just started at our school, it has the potential to expand into our neighborhood community and beyond, Grace said.

Grace wants to see the students go out into the community. They can plant native plants or garden, just make a positive impact on the community and the environment.

“Planting native plants sustains the ecosystem and it offsets all the building and the destruction of nature that is happening all around us,” she said.

“We’ve been doing this for years ,” she said. “I want a greater reach – education that spills into the households of the students that attend and out into the community”.

The school has partnered with Illinois Green for about four years and has consistently been awarded grants to help expand its green footprint. Grace wants it to be a greater reach. So she formed the Student-led Sustainability & Conservation Initiative.

Staff also attended the Summer Solstice Conference in Leland to learn about the future of sustainable landscape, environmental stewardship, prairie restoration and native plant species. At the end of the school year this year, students completed a rain water garden by partnering with the Illinois Green Alliance and the Illinois Green Schools Program.

Want to help the students and staff at Grace Holistic Center for Education to expand their environmental mindfulness into the larger community? The school is hosting community meetings for that purpose. The next one is at 6 p.m. Aug. 27 at the school building, 201 Garden Street, Yorkville. For more information on the program or the school, visit the website at ghcfe.org or their LinkedIn. You can also email sustainability@ghcfe.com or call Tairi Grace directly at 630-881-1095.