A lot has been happenning with the Youth & Sustainable Consumption project since the last project update in October 2005.
The big news is that our project partner, RMIT University, received an Australian Research Council grant to conduct further research in to sustainable consumption and young Australians and evaluate and enhance the community capacity building program developed as part of the National Youth Affairs Research Scheme funded research. For more info, go here
www.tigblog.org/group/otherwise/post/31832.
As a consequence of this grant, we now have additional momentum and resources to implement the community capacity building program in sites around Australia. A PhD student will be working with the Working Group members to collect data from the workshops and community evaluations to assess the effectiveness of the program in enabling young Australians as effective social change agents for sustainability and refining the program as we go.
The first two implementations of the revised program are in the Australian Capital Territory and Western Regional Victoria. Youth workshops will happen there this year. We are looking at other workshops throughout Victoria and in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, and perhaps Perth and WA, in 2007. Lots of work has been going in to developing the programs with our partners in the ACT and Victoria. As an example, Cameron is training some peers and young people to run a very short version of the Youth Workshop at the ACT Youth InterACT conference being held on March 31 as part of National Youth Week.
We have also just submitted a joint funding application to the Victorian Sustainability Fund with RMIT University, The Gould League and the Victorian Association of Environmental Education. This project fits in to the overall ARC research process and provides funding for many youth workshops in Victorian communities. The Gould League will lead the implementation of similar programs in Victorian schools.
The Working Group has also been reshaping itself, with a few people leaving, and some new people joining. We are gradually adding everyone's bios to the blog. See here:
www.tigblog.org/group/otherwise/post/35502.
Iris Bergmann has also joined the team at RMIT, working with John Fien on the ARC project. Jane Stewart from Ollie's Island (
www.ollierecycles.com) has also joined the team as we explore ways to utilise the Ollie's Island resource as part of the project.
Over the next few months, in addition to working on the ARC grant and furthering the implementation of the community capacity building program in the ACT and Victoria, members of the working group will be presenting to the Victoria EPA on the project (May 8) and Cameron will be presenting results of the NYARS research at the National Young Professionals Forum (May 9).
For background on the project, to find out how you can be involved, to read past updates, to subscribe to the project blog, or to download a copy of the
Sustainable Consumption: Young Australians as Agents of Change report, go to
www.iypf.org/IYPF-projects.htm#YouthSC.
Related news
* Reflections on the Asia-Pacific Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production
www.tigblog.org/group/otherwise/post/31866
www.tigblog.org/group/otherwise/post/31867
* Some articles on young eco-entrepreneurs
www.tigblog.org/group/otherwise/post/34825
* Australian Consumer Congress and the Victorian Association of Environmental Education (VAEE) Consumerism Network
www.tigblog.org/group/otherwise/post/35809
