​

It is our belief that “the opportunity to accomplish challenging tasks inspires young people to give their best.”

Leadership is a five-year program designed to provide challenges and opportunities to students in the classroom, the community, and in our natural environment.  Students that attend our program are part of a community network that prioritizes social justice, environmental stewardship, and community engagement.

Throughout the program, students fully participate in a variety of school, community, and outdoor activities that provide them with a diverse range of experiences. It is through these experiences that students are challenged to be active citizens, develop interdisciplinary collaboration, and leadership skills.

We believe that learning doesn’t just take place in the classroom, but is the accumulation of academic rigor and life experiences. Passion, ideals, and personal stories and experiences are inevitably rooted in everything we do and how we see the world. Through community based experiential learning, and opportunities to actively engage in local/global issues, we push students to integrate their past, present, and dreams for the future; resulting in a realm of potential, where a student’s values, experiences, and knowledge direct academic pursuits and future goals.

​

“Graduates of the Windermere Leadership program excel in these courses. They are strong conceptually and in challenging group processes. They demonstrate strong leadership skills in a traditional form (i.e. the individual that drives group performance) as well as in a dynamic, distributive manner (i.e. by allowing others to lead and being supportive of group harmony). Simply put, their experiences and development in the Leadership program puts them ahead of their peers within the faculty, and it is evident in the classroom and evident in the community. They enter our undergraduate degree programs with a level of understanding of the complex connections between food, health, culture and the environment that we aspire to attain for our students by 3rd or 4th year.” –Dr. Will Valley, Instructor in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia.

​