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.
