Hello Everyone! My name is Niki!

My name is Niki Foley, and I am one of the Kind Krafts Youth Ambassadors. I thought I’d take the time with this first post to introduce myself.
            I am a fourth year student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Right now I am finishing up the last few classes towards completing a Double Major in Anthropology and Sustainability. I have lived my whole life in a small community outside of Halifax, called Hammonds Plains. I spend most of my year studying at Dalhousie, doing volunteer work through Halifax, and working at a retail store in the city. In the summers I continue working at the retail store between volunteer projects, and spend all of my free time outside. Living outside of the city, in a house surrounded by bigs trees, a wide backyard, and a little lake, has made me love nature. In my spare time I can always be found on an adventure outside. 

Just another adventure! Swimming at the Laverty Falls waterfall in Fundy National Park, NB. 

            My passion for the outdoors, and desire to spend as much time as I can in nature, has lead me to develop a keen interest in environmental and sustainability issues. I believe the protection of the planet is a human responsibility as it is the planet that allows us to grow, thrive, love, laugh, and exist. In turn, I think we should respect and cherish all it has to offer.
            As a result of these interests, when I’m not studying Sustainability at Dalhousie, I am working environmental non-profits in Halifax, such as the Ecology Action Centre. Right now I working on a number of projects that fuel my passion for sustainability and planet protection, while also allowing me to engage with the wider community.
            As a volunteer I am currently helping to write a Guide for Energy Efficiency Upgrades Funding for Non-for-Profits in Nova Scotia, and researching the history of the Ecology Action Centre to re-write their wikipedia page. I’m also raising money for the Ecology Action Centre through a run at the Bluenose Marathon in Halifax in May! Funny enough, running the Ecology Action Centre lead to me run a half marathon for my twenty-first birthday!

21km for 21 years

                 ​Part of my love for nature and interest in working with organizations such as the Ecology Action Centre, is a desire to foster community engagement and development through engagement with the natural world. I think planet protecting action, when done at a community level, is incredibly powerful, and I have a passion for making that a possibility. Right now I’m working to extend that power into the hands of youth, in helping to develop a field trips program that brings middle school students to the Living Shoreline in Halifax to learn about sea level rise, climate change, and erosion, and how to work with nature to adapt naturally.
            In addition, I have a keen interest in the positive power of time spent in the outdoors, in relation to individual and community wellbeing. I’ve constantly seeking new ways to grow this area of interest. This past year at Dalhousie I organized a Green Mental Health Week that connected students with free, on-campus sustainable resources for wellbeing; such as yoga, free vegan meals, hiking trips, and meditation sessions. The week may be my proudest accomplishment to date.

​        Currently I working to expand the week into the next academic year, hoping to organize fall and winter semester events. Through an internship with the College of Sustainability at Dalhousie I’m also working to make hiking trails in Halifax more publicly accessible by mapping trails and collecting descriptive data for the database of a Global App company in California. Follow me on Instagram and you’ll see me spending all of my summer weekends trekking around the municipality with a GPS and a notebook and pen!

            Some fun facts about me…

•  I have two Shetland Sheep dogs named Molly and Sully
• Besides running and hiking, I also snow-shoe, mountain bike, stand up paddle board, snorkel, and sea-kayak
• My dream is to work for Parks Canada
• I’m on a mission to visit every national park in Canada before I turn 30
• My favourite food is grilled cheese sandwiches and peanut butter
• I have multiple candy stashes at work and home
• I have a bad habit of loosing shoes in nature; so far once at the Edmonton Ice Glaciers and once at Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick
  
• I pitch my camp tent using an extremely beat up (but still useable) Klean Kanteen as a hammer because I forget to bring one every time 

Sully (the big one) and Molly at the beach 

               Moving forward you’ll find me working and playing outdoors and doing everything I can to follow my passions for connecting communities and peoples through the outdoors and using those connections to make a more sustainable and loving world. Alongside me blazing the trail for a better world is the wonderful people behind kind krafts, whose work to support community development, most recently in the form of youth engagement.

Until next time,
Stay Kind 

​- niki