Fertile minds on show at Our Voice Sustainability Conference

Can you imagine a solar-powered fast food restaurant with a pen of free-range chooks laying eggs and a barn of dairy cows maintaining the flow of chocolate milk?

Or perhaps a garden made entirely from plastic bottles, suspended from a fence to attract butterflies and bees and kept alive by an in-built water recycling system?

These are just some of the ideas produced by the fertile minds of kindergarten and Year 1 students from St Joseph’s Primary and Bexhill Public School who, with the help of Southern Cross University education students, have been learning about environmental sustainability.

Over several months the students, guided by their SCU mentors, devised, tested and built sustainability projects, which will be exhibited at the Our Voice Sustainability Conference, to be held at SCU’s Lismore campus on October 31.

The conference will see students from 19 schools across the Northern Rivers, aged from three to 16, come together to voice their concerns and ideas relating to sustainability and the environment in their region.

Dr Marianne Logan, from SCU’s School of Education, said the conference was about sharing ideas and inspiring kids to take an active role in the welfare of the environment.

According to Dr Logan, who coordinated the school sustainability projects, children have a unique way of looking at the world, with an innate ability to question, explore and create.

“I think one of the big things is that we underestimate children – they are so full of ideas and have a different way of looking at things,” she said.

“The idea behind the sustainability projects was to incorporate science and technology together so instead of our education students going into a tutorial room and learning they were actually applying the ideas with the kids in the classroom.

“Our Voice will give the students a platform to present their ideas to a larger audience and to discuss their ideas with other students from the region.

“The whole point of the project and the conference is to create an awareness that one person can initiate change and by working together sustainability is achievable.”

SCU education student Paula Copeland helped a group of Bexhill Public School students design and build a suspended, self-watering garden made entirely from recycled materials.

Ms Copeland said it was amazing to see the kids ‘make real-life connections to what they already knew and what they were learning’.

“Our aim was to teach the kids to think sustainably using scientific and creative thinking,” she said.

“Developing the sustainability project was an interesting process to watch and the kids took the knowledge they already had to a new level. They had so many ideas.

“This process cemented their understanding of their environment and by the end they had firmly grasped the concept of sustainability.”

The Our Voice Sustainability Conference will be held on October 31 from 10am–2.10pm at SCU’s Lismore campus.

The sustainability projects will be on show and students will participate in sustainability seminars, drama, music and discussion. There will also be an address by the keynote speaker, Noah Dingle, a six-year-old who raised $1500 to help save Borneo’s endangered sun bears.

The aim of the conference is to spark conversation through the exchange of diverse perspectives. For more information and for the full program go to Our Voice.

(L-R) Cohen Duncan, Dr Marianne Logan, Heath Tyler, Nikki Wagner, Lilly Cliff and Layla Davidson show off their sustainability projects at St Joseph's Primary School, Alstonville.