New multicultural leaders "fantastically enthusiastic"
April 2010
Environment Victoria’s Nina Bailey has been heading over to the Visy Cares Hub in Sunshine every Thursday for the last few weeks, to teach young people from multicultural backgrounds about sustainability.
The group is from a mix of backgrounds: Ethiopian, Chadian, Sudanese, Vietnamese, and Karenni and Karen people from Burma. Most have been on incredible journeys to arrive in Australia, including spending years of their lives living in refugee camps, and one has only been here for three months. Nina always comes back to the office pretty excited, because the group is passionate and keen to learn more about Australia and the Australian environment: “they’re fantastically enthusiastic.”
They’re the new intake of the Multicultural Leaders in Sustainability program, which has been teaching leadership and sustainability skills to young people since 2006. Lots of the 2010 group have first hand experience of environmental problems, like deforestation in Burma, drought in northern Africa and thick blankets of smog in the cities they’ve travelled through on the way here. But they’re mostly new to ideas like climate change, and to speaking English and living in Australian society. Nina and Caitlin Wilks (from partner organisation the Centre for Multicultural Youth) will take them on field trips and a camp, to take them out of the suburbs and into Australia’s natural environment.
They’ll also teach them about reducing their own environmental footprint, and will give them the leadership skills to run their own youth-led sustainability projects, to engage their communities. “They want to learn about the environment and how to be a good environmental leader,” says Nina, “and some of them want to go back to their countries one day and teach people what they’ve learnt here.”
Past Multicultural Leaders in Sustainability participants have run projects like helping the local Dandenong community switch to low flow showerheads, holding a “recycled clothing party”, and running water workshops with the South Sudanese community. The showerhead project reduced the community’s water use by more than 1.2 million litres a year, and greenhouse gas emissions by 57.6 tonnes a year.
If the enthusiasm in their first few sessions is anything to go by, the current Multicultural Leaders in Sustainability intake will soon be running some pretty impressive sustainability projects of their own in Melbourne’s western suburbs.
Check out our film on Victoria's Multicultural Leaders in Sustainability
MLS is funded primarily by philanthropic charities and trusts. Sincere thanks for MLS in 2010 go to the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, Foster’s Community Grants, The ETA Basan Charitable Trust (managed by Trust Company Limited), and Ivor Ronald Evans Foundation (managed by Equity Trustees). Thanks also go to Brimbank City Council and City West Water.
