Hello Alumni!

We have been putting together a Home Farm Horticultural Therapy Certificate Alumni News now for a couple of years that have included some very inspiring stories of students and life after the certificate.  Meg Hansen started us off on this newsletter enterprise and now Emma Rooney is taking the newsletter another step, into the edu.blogs world!  More networking plus more interaction equals more support!

My time as Education Director with the Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association (CHTA) is now over after 2 years.  Together with the Education Team of Nancy Lee Colibaba, Emma Rooney, Tami Proctor, Don Weber, Alex Scott, Niamh Connery, and Stacey Wilson, we defined the CHTA expectation of a Horticultural Therapist by listing the HT competencies on the CHTA website; updated and put on the CHTA website internship guidelines hopefully encouraging all professionally registered HT’s to take mentor interns; with the legwork of Margaret Nevett, established the first HT group insurance; submitted to the CHTA Board educational guidelines for workshops, certificates, diplomas and degrees which will hopefully be approved this fall for membership guidance.   Emma Rooney has kindly taken over the Education Director position.  I will continue to support Emma and the rest of the Education Team as a member of the CHTA.

The CHTA conference in Calgary was very good!  We had a great assortment of speakers including Gwenn Fried of the Rusk Institute in New York.  I was thrilled that the rest of Canada had an opportunity to attend a CHTA conference and am hoping that hosts across Canada will take the opportunity as the Calgary Zoo did to partner with the CHTA and produce a wonderful conference.  The Calgary Zoo, Jane Reksten,  Gillian Cardwell and Rebecca Feasby worked hard at supporting Karen Ince of the CHTA to make the conference a success.  Thank you!!

The other great news is that Home Farm is going on line in 2009!  With the expense and impact of air travel on the environment and those that do not live close to a centre offering HT education plus the added expense of work leave, travel and accommodation, Home Farm on line will provide  a live on line virtual classroom experience with follow up HT activities and field trips at sites near the students.

Please continue to support this newsletter!  Write your stories however big or small, and continue to inspire future HT’s.  We must continue to support each other as much as we can because the support really does make a difference!!

Thanks,

Christine Pollard, Home Farm