Every fall for PBI Leadership Camp we work with Polar Bears International to host student leaders and Zoo Keepers from all over the world on our Tundra Buggy Lodge.
The goal of the camp is to equip the students to return home as ‘Ambassadors of the Arctic’, communicating in their relatively-southern communities how peoples' actions, no matter how small, have the power to affect life even in the arctic. Students are recruited from high school grades 9 and 10 to ensure they can return home and still have a couple years to generate polar bear and conservation awareness at the their schools.
While in Churchill the students spend time with Parks Canada on a maternal den study and a day with Manitoba Conservation understanding the Polar Bear Alert Program.
The students then spend four days based at the Tundra Buggy® Lodge, venturing out during the days in their 'roving classroom' (a Tundra Buggy, of course!) taking part in leadership activities geared to help them better understand issues affecting polar bears and the environment in which polar bears live.
Leadership Camp students shared their findings and experiences from the isolated, barren tundra back to civilization via online journals on the Polar Bears International website.