Strategic plan 2026-2029
Our Strategic Plan: Growing Our Camps, Diversifying Our Future
Le Noyau Éducation is growing. This year, our citizen science camps welcome youth aged 8 to 13 across multiple sites, from the Pike River to the Missisquoi Museum, in bilingual programming supported by the Lake Champlain Basin Program and Water Rangers education kits. To support this growth for the long term, our board has taken on real strategic planning work for 2026-2029, and we wanted to share the broad strokes of it with you.
How we built this plan
This planning work would not have been possible without the support of the Lake Champlain Basin Program's operational grant, which gave us the room and the resources to slow down and think collectively about the organization's future, rather than simply reacting season to season. Our board met several times specifically for this work, not to be handed a ready-made answer from staff, but to explore options together, ask the harder questions, and build consensus around our priorities. We deliberately kept this working group small and varied, with room for youth voices at the table, so that everyone felt invested in the decisions rather than just consulted after the fact.
Our intent isn't to lock in a rigid three-year plan, but to lay a solid foundation that lets us grow, year over year, while staying true to our mission. The board plans to revisit this plan regularly, with check-ins planned for the fall to come back together after the summer season.
Growing support for our camps
Our priority is to stabilize our camps so families can depend on Le Noyau as a reliable summer option, one that welcomes youth across the full spectrum, whether autistic, living with ADHD, gifted, or simply looking to play and learn in a safe, structured space. This summer, our citizen science camp is running with a full staff team, a three-week curriculum built around water quality parameters (pH, dissolved oxygen, nitrates), and a presence across several partner sites. We also want to create more ways for families and the wider community to experience the farm directly: open houses, river walks, harvest parties, shared meals, and opportunities to play together, so the work we do stays rooted in joy.
Diversifying our income streams
To build long-term financial stability, we're working to diversify our revenue beyond grants alone, through memberships, sliding-scale contributions, local partnerships, and community events.
Fundraising Events 2026
Our very first fundraising attempt will take place on the morning of July 18, 2026, at Le Noyau farm: a community farm visit and maze walk, followed by a river water-testing workshop and collective comic book session in partnership with Fiducie foncière du Mont Pinacle (registration required on their site montpinacle.ca) . This visit is open to everyone in the community, whether or not you're able to contribute financially. And if you can, even $5 makes a difference.
This fall, on October 30, we'll host a ZombieSeedz-style Halloween maze, with local volunteers dressed as zombies, ghouls, and clowns, for a festive evening that also supports our camps. More info to come
In November, a community spaghetti dinner will be organized by a local church that wants to specifically support the staff who work directly with autistic children at camp. Le Noyau will be contributing food to this event, including a chance to introduce people to the Jimmy Nardello frying pepper and other rare, delicious varieties grown through our seed conservation work.
We're also exploring a financial committee, open to all members of the organization, to help scope grants, support letters to donors, and back the executive director's fundraising work.
Our partnership with the Wander Series in Bedford
Thanks to the generosity of Graymont Mines, 16 youth are participating for a full year, free of charge, in the Wander Series at Heritage Park in Bedford, in partnership with Canopeum, the non-profit dedicated to growing native trees and seed saplings. That link to Canopeum shows up directly in the programming: youth grow real native trees, alongside building wildlife habitats, reusing materials, and creating outdoors through storytelling and play. This is exactly the kind of partnership we hope to grow: local businesses choosing to invest directly in the youth of their community.
Looking toward 2029
Further out, we're working toward more collaborative governance inspired by Indigenous governance models rooted in kinship and reciprocity, deeper community ties through regular gatherings and events, and by 2029, an infrastructure grant application to build a welcome and processing centre on the farm.