Arabic-speaking women visit Melbourne’s own sustainable village
April 2011
“They remind me of my village!” When Environment Victoria’s GreenTown Program took 12 Arabic-speaking women to the CERES environment park in Melbourne’s north, the chickens there got quite a reaction. CERES showcases all kinds of sustainable practices, chickens being just the start.
In the CERES Eco House, the women looked at ways to make a home and garden more energy and water efficient. With interactive displays on the energy consumption of different light bulbs and on how light falls on a house and where best to put solar panels, plus lots of products to see and touch, there was plenty to discuss. Many of the women already knew lots of ways to save energy and are taking action already: turning down the temperature of their hot water system, urging their kids to wash their hands in cold water and reminding them to only use hot water when they actually need it. Almost all are already growing abundant vegetable gardens.
The women are from Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and northern Iraq, and have been in Australia for anywhere from two to 26 years. None had been to CERES before. GreenTown participants Lina Hassan and Mesko Ayouz had organised them to come, with the help of the Victorian Arabic Social Services organisation, and also did the translation between Arabic and English.
The group said their visit to CERES taught them new ways to save energy, gave them inspiration for water efficient vegetable gardens, and showed them how environmental sustainability can be done on a large scale in the middle of the suburbs.
GreenTown trains people from migrant, refugee and Indigenous communities, like Lina and Mesko, to be sustainability leaders. Besides carrying out sustainability audits of homes and businesses in their communities, they help run workshops and field trips, like this one to CERES. GreenTown has worked with over 2,000 people since it started in 2008 and continues to grow, with projects starting up with the Burmese community in Ringwood and the multicultural community in the Collingwood public housing estate.
Hear Gabby's story - a four minute film on GreenTown participant Gabby Fakhri
