Youth Leadership for Sustainable Consumption in the ACT
Project Update

Thank you for indicating your interest in the Youth Leadership for Sustainable Consumption Capacity Building project. The project is focused on assisting young ACT residents to develop a greater understanding of their resource use and environmental impact. The project aims to empower young people to become leaders within their communities, by identifying actions they can make to change their lifestyles and protect the environment.

The project begun in September 2005 when a group of interested organizations came together at a Community Development Network Forum to form the Youth and Sustainability Coalition, to run and administer the Youth Leadership for Sustainable Consumption Capacity Building project. The organizations involved include the Conservation Council of South East Region and Canberra, the SHINE (Sustainability Happening in Education) network, Greensteps at the Australian National University, the Nature & Society Forum, the ACT Office for Sustainability, the Sustainable Schools program run by the Department of Education and Training, the Canberra Institute of Technology Community Development Department, the University of Canberra, the Minister’s Youth Council, the Youth Coalition of the ACT, the YWCA, the International Young Professionals Foundation and RMIT University.

These organizations assist the Coalition by donating their employee time and resources, developing a local support network and assisting in identifying young people who are interested in leading their community on sustainable issues. Young people and people who work with young people will take part in a Train-the-Trainer workshop that will develop their skills in sustainable issues and training facilitation. These facilitators will then go on to run Youth Workshops that will allow young ACT residents to develop skills in sustainability. When the training is completed, young people will take their new knowledge and develop their own actions to improve sustainability within their communities, with the ongoing support of the organizational members within the Coalition. The ACT program will form part of a national research project, funded by the Australian Research Council, to test, evaluate, and deliver an effective community capacity building model for youth leadership on sustainable consumption that follows on from the National Youth Affairs Research Scheme report Sustainable Consumption: Young Australians as Agents of Change.

In March a pilot version of the Youth Workshop training package was featured at the Youth InterACT Conference as part of ACT Youth Week 2006, and received positive feedback. A grant application was submitted to Environment ACT in June 2006. This grant was successful and a sum of over $15,000 was secured to implement the project over the next six months, as the first step in our long term goal of establishing a vibrant network of young ACT sustainability change agents in the next 3 years.
In August 2006 recruitment for the part-time position of project officer took place and Julia Collin came on board. Core organizational member Community Education and Training has provided office space for the project officer to be housed, and has provided space for meetings.

Julia’s role will consist of assisting the ACT Youth and Sustainability Coalition in developing the Train-the-Trainer and Youth Workshop training packages. She will also provide administrative support in the organization of the training workshops, and facilitating Coalition meetings. Once the training workshops are completed she will be a point of contact for young people who are developing their own sustainable activities within the ACT community.

Julia is a twenty year-old student at the Australian National University, studying a full-time Arts degree with majors in Politics and Gender Studies. Her previous experience in the sector includes voluntary work in the youth sector participating at various youth themed events, as well as serving on the Youth Coalition of the ACT board of governance (the peak youth advisory body in the territory) and representing ACT young people at the national planning group for National Youth Week 2005. Her experience in the sustainability sector stems from her work for the “Home Energy Advice Team”, an ACT government funded initiative that provides free energy advice and subsidized home energy audits to the ACT community. In addition to this she also has a very strong personal interest in sustainability issues, and is passionate about the encouragement and recognition of youth participation within the community.

In August 2006 members of the Coalition met and began modifying the training materials for the Train-the-Trainer workshops. At present, the Coalition and the Project officer are working on finalizing this training material, and the workshop is scheduled to take place on 29th September 2006. It is anticipated that the Youth Workshops that will be run in November and December 2006.

At present, several ACT schools have expressed interest in taking part in the Youth Workshops, these links have been established through a connection to the ACT Sustainable Schools network. A database has been established for people to register their interest in the program and to maintain contact with, and at least 30 individuals have identified they are interested in participating in the training workshops.

This is an ongoing project, and we anticipate that there will be many opportunities to be involved in the near future, both in the Train-the-Trainer and Youth Workshop training packages. We aim to provide you with more project updates as we progress, and to inform you of how you can be involved. We are interested in maintaining contact and support with various community members, and building up a base of interested participants who will be able to provide input and participate in the project in the near future.

We are currently taking applicants for the Train-the-Trainer workshop, which will be held on 29th September 2006, from 12:30-4:30pm in our Hackett Office. Please contact us if you are interested in taking part in the training workshop, have any questions about the project, or want to know more about how you can be involved.

You will find the National Youth Affairs Research Scheme report Sustainable Consumption: Young Australians as Agents of Change at http://www.iypf.org/IYPF-projects.htm#YouthSC.

Julia Collin
Project Officer
Youth Leadership for Sustainable Consumption Capacity Building project
Hosted by Community Education and Training
114 Maitland Street
Hackett ACT 2602
(02) 6257 6321
programs@cet.org.au