Healthy School Initiative
The Haverkate
Healthy School initiative has been started as a way to improve the
standards of indoor air quality in Ontario schools. Our goal is to
ensure that children in this province have a safe, toxic free indoor
school environment in which to learn and thrive. Good indoor air
quality is essential to good learning and our sense of well being.
It results in vibrant, consistent learning with little absenteeism
and good productivity for both students and staff.
No child should be sick as a
result of being at school. We know now that poor indoor air quality
poses serious health problems to children.
Poor indoor air quality can cause fatigue, nosebleeds,
rashes, nausea, headaches, respiratory difficulties, and ear, nose
and throat problems. Some children, particularly those with
allergies and chemical sensitivities are really suffering in their
school environments. Learning is compromised when a child is
struggling with their health. How
can we expect students to strive for academic excellence when we
don’t provide them with basic clean air to breath? Our kids
deserve better!
The Haverkate
Healthy School Award is given to those schools that have made a real
commitment to provide safe indoor air quality for their students.
These schools have made a commitment to excellence in their indoor
environments in order to provide the children in their care with an
optimal learning environment.
The first step
for schools is to call us for an Environmental Assessment. At
Haverkate and Associates we do so much more than just a visual
inspection. We use state
of the art instrumentation that will allow you to see exactly what
is going on in your indoor environment. We’ll provide you with a
comprehensive, easy to understand report outlining your results and
we’ll provide recommendations on how to make your school air the
safest that it can be.
Those schools
that have the assessment done, implement our recommendations and
succeed in obtaining safe air readings will be awarded the Haverkate
Healthy School Award. These schools will be presented with a
certificate to display in their foyer and will also be featured on
our website (coming soon). We will be happy to come out to your
parent meetings with our communications package to discuss what we
do. We’ll help you every step of the way.
We’d like to
thank all of the schools that are involved in this initiative.
Together with you, we are improving the quality of our indoor
environments one school at a time.
Thank you!
Frank Haverkate
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