Students pitch in, speak out during Green Week at Avondale
Staff members and students collected 100 kilograms of rubbish and planted 140 trees in a practical demonstration of advocacy during Green Week at Avondale.
A clean up on Ghosties Beach in the Munmorah State Conservation Area on the New South Wales Central Coast came on the final day of the week. Among the items collected from the breach: a trampoline.
“Your group removed a huge amount of rubbish from our coastal environment,” writes Lucy Kelliher, the Sustainability Engagement Officer for Lake Macquarie City Council in an email to Francesca Kato. A Bachelor of Arts student completing the unit Justice and Advocacy at the college of higher education, Kato organised the rubbish collection as part of the council’s Eco Angel Program. Kelliher thanked the students for their support of Eco Angel. “It’s fantastic to see so many young people actively involved with caring for our environment and community.”
The rubbish collection helped raise Kato’s awareness of the importance of environmental advocacy. “This is our home,” she says, “so we should be taking care of it.”
Green Week also saw Kato’s classmates organise a bicycle riding challenge and a rubbish awareness campaign on the Lake Macquarie campus. They even planted 140 trees and pulled weeds on a new section of Sandy Creek Walk.
“As a Christian higher education provider, we should focus as much as we can on caring for the environment or reducing our impact on it,” says Dr Jason Morton, a Senior Lecturer in Biology who with his brother, Darren, also a lecturer at Avondale, established Sandy Creek Walk. Morton believes in planting an environmental legacy in the minds of the students. It will help them remember the experience for years, he says.
Madeleine Reynolds enjoyed the unit’s focus on putting theory into practice. “I learn more outside a classroom where I can bounce ideas off others. And I have a green thumb, so planting trees and pulling weeds was right up my alley.”
Ryan Smith organised a petition to install a bicycle lane on College Drive. The international poverty and development studies major says planning Green Week helped put his degree in perspective. “Green Week was a little taste of what advocacy is like. It’s good to know I’m learning the actual skills used in the field.”
Green Week is “an expression of Avondale’s commitment to caring for God’s creation,” says Dr Brad Watson, who delivers the unit Justice and Advocacy in his role as Senior Lecturer in International Poverty and Development Studies. He says it is important for students, particularly those in a Christian institution, to experience practical advocacy. “Christians are too timid too often—they don’t speak up enough about important issues. Advocacy puts us in a space where we learn through doing to be courageous.”
Watson hopes one day to see his students “have the confidence to not only say, ‘enough,’ but to do something about it.”
One of the objectives of the week: to raise awareness of Avondale’s Environmental Sustainability Policy. Launching the policy helped earned Avondale the status of Bronze Partner in the New South Wales Government’s Sustainability Advantage Program. Avondale also earned its status by: signing a print service contract that reduced the number of devices on campus; and decommissioning its boiler and replacing it with a gas heating system. It is also monitoring energy and water use to foster a culture of individual responsibility.
Share
Author
Author
