SCU challenges climate change at ideas fest

It is the challenge we can all play our part in. But this Wednesday at Southern Cross University, students will take the lead when more than 300 children and teenagers from local schools will share ideas on how to combat climate change.

The Climate Change Challenge will be held at the Lismore campus from 10am where students from ages 8 to 15 can take part in the 'photo voice' competition, where they can use photography to have a voice on the issue and win prizes.

Students will also be able to engage with learning stations designed by each of the school groups when they take over the University’s plaza, Learning Centre and function room.

Organiser David Rousell, a Research Fellow and lecturer from the SCU School of Education, said the new school-based curriculum, culminating in the challenge enabled students to have their own response to climate change and acknowledges kids as experts in their own lives.

“This gives students a sense of political agency and to show their own research throughout the region,” he said.

“We have worked with kids and teachers directly to create a climate change curriculum, the first of its kind in the world, which is now going into schools.”

Mr Rousell said schools in Bexhill, Mullumbimby and Alstonville had taken on the inter-disciplinary model which can be implemented through any English, creative arts, science and history classes, based around the method of students working together.

“This challenge is about bringing schools together to embark on projects that have a public outcome and can create real change. Within this research, kids are doing amazing work where they take a photo which represents some aspect of climate change and they write about it,” he said.

“Some students take photos of beautiful things they find in their environment, then write about how it could be lost or destroyed because of climate change.

“We even received submissions from students throughout the holidays who have taken up the challenge in their own time, because they understand it is up to them to help create change.”

For more information about the Climate Change Challenge visit climatechangeandme.com.au