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Dec 22nd, 2006 - 05:14:50 |
Cam
OTHERWISE is a project of the International Young Professionals
Foundation, RMIT University, and increasing number of individual and
community partners and investors. OTHERWISE is a community capacity
building program to catalyse community partnerships and development
to nurture youth leadership on community, national and global
sustainability issues.
For more background, go to:
http://ozotherwise.wordpress.com/the-project/
In the last six months, the project has really been gathering
momentum. The Working Group has two funding proposals being
considered, one for the creation of a program manual, the other for
creation of a series of sustainability action briefs. We are also
working with another community to get the program funded and
initiated there, and we are in early stage conversations with a third
community.
The real excitement has been generated in the Australian Capital
Territory where the first OTHERWISE youth workshop program has just
been completed! You can read more on this below.
We've formed the beginnings of our national online network; got our
working group blog going; started pulling together our draft internal
project manual; enhanced our trainer network; and broadened our
partnerships.
2007 is going to be an exciting year. If you are interested in
further information, or have an interest in joining our Working
Group, e-mail us via youth.sc@iypf.org.
More on our Sustainabilty Action Briefs grant application:
An application was submitted to the Myer Foundation G4 fund seeking
financial support for a coordinator to prepare and collate a series
of Sustainability Action Briefs. The application proposal involved a
collaboration between Cycle for Sustainability www.sustainia.org.au,
the Sustainable Living Foundation www.slf.org.au and our IYPF
OTHERWISE project team. The proposal had three elements; (1) a series
of Sustainability Action Briefs; (2) an Australian version of Junk to
Funk (a funky youth oriented guide to sustainability action
originally created by The Otesha Project www.otesha.ca); and (3) the
creation of a Cycle for Sustainability documentary.
More on OTHERWISE in the ACT
In the last month we have run out first sustainable training workshop
for young Canberrans aged 15-25. We had 25 enthusiastic young people
attend 3 sessions, to learn about diverse subjects like their
Ecological Footprint, the Life Cycle of everyday objects, Culture
Jamming, and Greening small groups.
Even more exciting, we had several innovative projects emerge that
our participants will be working on in the coming months.
Projects include:
* A sustainable rock concert, a totally carbon neutral event to see
local music, promote recycling, waste reduction and other green
messages.
* An update of the ACT green guide last produced in 2003, to
distribute to local households and be hosted online to ensure
Canberrans have access to sustainable living options.
* A craft and sewing group that will promote using second hand
materials and reworking old garments, giving free lessons on sewing
and mending to ensure Canberrans get the most out of their clothes.
* A sustainability program for schools, to help send the message out
to young people in Canberra
Many other ideas emerged, that he participants will be integrating
into their personal lives, and the groups they are part of within
their communities.
Supporting these projects is our brand new blog at
http://ozotherwise.wordpress.com/. Check it out for sustainable
consumption tips, links, and to see what our workshoppees are up to!
2007 will see the ACT Otherwise team supporting all of these
projects, and also running another training course in a local
Canberra High School, and possibly in a local Scout group. We will
also be attempting to secure more funding to keep the momentum going
over the next few years in the local Canberra community.
Dec 11th, 2006 - 00:28:47 |
Julia Collin
2006 Sustainable youth workshops coming to a close
The ACT project is currently in the third week of delivering a three week sustinability training package.
We have 25 young people who come from the public sector, the local universities, vocational colleges, high schools and broader employment sector who have been enthusiastically attending the regular workshops, and a sustinable site visit last Saturday.
We have been using many of the initial modules used in the inital pilot project in 5 sites across Australia, including the ecological footprint analysis, the media activity, and the action planning activity. In addition we have also developed some other modules, including a life-cycle analysis of a product, and 'greening your workplace/school/home' module aimed at educating on how to change group attitudes to sustinable consumption (see the uploded documents section for copies of these).
We have been utilising two of the facilitators from the Train-theTrainer workshops we held for the project in September of this year.
Stay tuned for more updates on the project, and what our passionate young people are up to!
Oct 18th, 2006 - 08:31:59 |
Cam
Project Moving Forward in 2006
The OTHERWISE team are working with a coalition of parties in the ACT to build the capacity of the community to have young people take leadership on sustainable consumption.
A Train the Trainer workshop was held in late September. The participants will co-facilitate youth workshops in the ACT before the end of the year.
Materials from the workshop will be posted here as updates to existing documents & new resources in the coming weeks.
Nov 8th, 2005 - 05:47:40 |
Cam
New Consumption Education Resource for Teachers in Victoria
Alerting you to the recent publication of Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV) Consuming Planet Earth.
This resource is available on the CAV site on: http://www.consumer.vic.gov.au >Young people & students > Teachers resources
Its also been added to the documents bank of this project group.
Oct 24th, 2005 - 00:45:05 |
Cam
October Working Group update
The IYPF's Youth and Sustainable Consumption working group (see www.iypf.org/IYPF-projects.htm#YouthSC) has been continuing to collaborate over the last 4 months. Activities in this time have included educating others about sustainable consumption issues and the role of young people, disseminating the results of the Sustainable Consumption: Young Australians as Agents of Change report, and further building momentum for additional capacity building workshops - including meetings and proposal writing. This is all in the context of continuing to work towards an Australia wide training and development program that supports young people to be leaders towards more sustainable communities - and IYPF's longer-term plans to translate the capacity building program to other countries via its membership network.
Education and Dissemination
The Working Group collaborated to produce 3 different articles and press releases about the Youth & Sustainable Consumption report and project - a short version, one targeting an adult audience, and one targeting a youth audience. The team has started distributing these articles through different channels, both within Australia and overseas, with the intention of growing awareness of the SC issue and the role of young people generally, and generating interest in the capacity building project for youth leadership on sustainability. Publication so far has included an article was published in ECOS magazine (www.publish.csiro.au/ecos/) and in the ACT Healthlink journal. The team will continue distribution of these articles over the coming months. If you would like us to send you an article to run in your newsletter or to put on your website, get in contact with us and we can work with you to tailor something to your needs.
The team has also used various events to educate on SC and promote the project. Representatives made a presentation at the UNESCO symposium on the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, where IYPF was a co-sponsor and contributed to the development of a national framework for the Decade. Working Group members ran a workshop at the Students of Sustainability (SOS) conference (www.sos2005.org) with the people from the Cycle for Sustainability project (www.sustainia.org.au), who are now including the initiative in to their SC education and awareness raising activities they are conducting during their cycle through Australia. More recently, they presented at the Asia-Pacific Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production (www.6aprscp.com). All presentations and papers are available from the IYPF's Y&SC website http://www.iypf.org/IYPF-projects.htm#YouthSC. The team is continually looking for other opportunities to present and contribute to debates, so if you know of anything, let us know.
Capacity Building Workshops
As part of work by an Australian working group to disseminate the findings of the report, local implementations of the community capacity building program to facilitate and support youth action on sustainability are being pursued around the country. Conversations and meetings have commenced in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) towards implementing the program, and a proposal is in the advanced stage for 4 sites in regional Victoria. There is also interest from Western Australia to be followed up. In the ACT the capacity building program was the topic of a recent Community Development Network of the ACT & Region forum. Through the forum, participants were invited to get involved in the implementation of a youth leadership for sustainability initiative across the ACT, while also being encouraged to use a similar model with other groups, such as the aged, primary school children, and in the workplace.
Over the remainder of 2005, work will continue with the stakeholders in the ACT and in regional Victoria to develop a community plan and community steering group for fostering and supporting young people to make personal change and lead activities that achieve more sustainable consumption. This will involve more stakeholder meetings, a further community workshop with a range of stakeholders, developing an implementation plan for 2006 and beyond, and writing proposals for resources as necessary.
Your involvement
This is an exciting and growing IYPF initiative, both here in Australia and with potential for overseas. There are lots of opportunities for people to contribute to the Working Group and project, from doing research, helping to write proposals, disseminating information to networks, participating in train-the-trainer sessions and becoming youth workshop facilitators, and introducing the project to your local community. We are also very interested to hear from young professionals involved in sustainability and sustainable consumption projects, in their communities, workplaces or their own lives, as possible case studies for our research and for inspiring other young people. The Working Group encourages you to read all the background material and/or join our team and introduce yourself and let us know your interests. To get involved in the project working group, contact Tomi Winfree on tomiwinfree@iypf.org. Also check out http://www.iypf.org/IYPF-projects.htm#YouthSC.
Related news
? The Asia-Pacific component of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development is being coordinated from UNESCO's Bangkok office (UNESCO is the lead agency for DESD) - see www.unescobkk.org/esd
? See this in-depth article on the 'consumer cult of individualism' www.abc.net.au/catapult/indepth/s1468647.htm
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