Jessica Blackman

08 Sep Jessica Blackman

Jessica Blackman, Australia

Brisbane City Council

Presentation Title: Green Heart Schools – Youth leadership and our water resilient future

Brisbane City Council’s Green Heart Schools program works with teachers, students and school communities throughout Brisbane to develop and deliver a range of creative and innovative projects which engage and involve young people in creating a clean, green and sustainable city. The Student Environmental Leadership Network (SELN) helps Year 10 students to develop the knowledge, skills and confidence to create and lead environmental behaviour change projects in their school and local community. Themes include water smart behaviours, waste minimisation, active travel and greening the school.  In 2017, 57 students from 33 schools participated in the program.

In 2017, more than 700 Year 7 students participated Brisbane’s largest sustainability schools event, the Future BNE Challenge. The challenge was directly aligned to the Australian Curriculum across many subject areas and we were lucky enough to have Australia’s leading science communicator, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki to officially open the program. The inquiry-based learning challenge asked school teams to critically analyse water use from a local and global perspective within four themes; social considerations, sustainability, environmental challenges, and economic needs. They were tasked with designing and modelling innovative, radical and future-thinking solutions to secure our water future for the year 2100!

Hear from Mount Alvernia College students about their experiences with the Green Heart Schools program.