Workshops and Field Trips

Delivering workshops in 10 community languages

The bilingual educators offer face-to-face learning opportunities within their own communities. Workshops are held in health, religious and community centres/facilities – wherever communities meet. Participants are encouraged to share and explore approaches and experiences from their country of origin and Australia. Workshops are tailored to the needs of clients and participants. Workshops are most effective when run as a sequence of activities that build knowledge and engagement over time. Follow-up contact after the workshop series is designed to reinforce commitment and provide further support. Participants leave the workshop with practical, simple ideas for individual and collaborative action. For example, as a result of the ECSLP, some councils have seen an increase in diversity among participants in bush-care groups, community gardens and other place-based initiatives such as tree-planting days. The program has also supported a reduction in recycling contamination and stormwater pollution, and reduced water and electricity consumption at a household level. Workshop topics include:

• Sustainable Living
• Water Conservation
• Composting and Worm Farming
• Waste Reduction and Recycling
• Storm Water protection
• Natural Cleaning
• Biodiversity Protection
• Energy Conservation
• Sustainable Gardening
• Air Quality

When workshops are combined with field trips, participants strengthen their relationship with to the area by building geographic knowledge, connecting with local groups, and learning about Aboriginal culture in relation to country. To book workshops and field trips please email or telephone 02 9319 0288.
 

Field trips in community languages

Direct experience is a highly effective way of encouraging understanding about environmental issues and the educators regularly take groups on field trips. This helps to increase people’s understanding of their own impact on their local environment and, most importantly, it builds a connection with place.
Visits to waste management operations – such as recycling centres and landfill facilities – participants can see and experience issues discussed in the workshop sessions and have an opportunity to compare local systems with processes used in their country of origin.
During trips to national (or district) parks and waterways, participants experience biodiversity first-hand and appreciate how the natural environmental is affected by stormwater pollution, litter and weeds, for example.
For many new and recently arrived immigrants, field trips provide a first and important step towards understanding and caring for their local environment in an Australian context.

“We found this outing was extremely important for the health and wellbeing of our client group. For many of the women, it was their first time outside of Auburn. They had never seen mangroves and enjoyed the education behind it.”
– Oula Falah, Auburn Migrant Resource Centre