What do Vietnamese bakers, halal butchers, Chinese grocers, ethnic clubs and Thai restaurants all have in common? They are all small businesses with big opportunities to save money on their electricity bills.

The Latin Garden members at Addision Road have celebrated their first harvest from their special ‘La Milpa’ project. La Milpa represents Latin America and includes lots of vegetables that are part of Latin culture and daily food.

From February to March of 2014, I have delivered a series of workshops with the topic of Love Food Hate Waste at MTC Australia Horsnby office. It is a mixed group of English study, the participants are from a diverse background but most of them are Mandarin speakers. It was great to see all participants enjoying and sharing the information about how to reduce food waste at their homes, thereby reduce the cost of living and reduce the impact on the environment.  

While visiting small bussinesses for the BEST project, our Mandarin bilingual educator Rose stumbled across a smart restaurant owner who had swapped his expensive-to-run airconditioner for a whole lot of efficient fans, saving him lots of energy and money!

What makes a person Australian or Chinese?  Is it a passport?  Or perhaps genes?  Well cultural identity was defined a lot more sensually at my meeting with Hills Chinese Women Association last week: apparently the smell and taste of food form the root of a Chinese person.

From August to November, our Mandarin Educator Grace Lu ran a series of workshops with a group from the Maroubra Chinese Church.  Participants increased the sustainable living awareness through sharing experiences, learning from each other and from Grace.  Mr. Zhang, representative of the group, wrote about their experiences.

We would like to introduce you to our two fantastic new bilingual educators that have joined our team! Rose Xu (Mandarin) and Louie Leung (Cantonese) have started their new positions on the 1st of October and we are happy to have them on board! 

Please read more about Rose and Louie below…

by Dewi Meza

Hi there my name is Dewi and I am from the north of Mexico. I meet Pilar a couple of years ago when I came to Sydney from Queensland. She has introduced me to all these courses like composting and no-dig gardening, which I truly enjoy and take into practice. Now I am part of the Latin garden.

Would you drink recycled water? That’s what I had to ask myself when I was preparing for a live talk back interview on SBS Cantonese Radio last month.

Take a bunch of oranges and a handful of cloves, a few pieces of string and you own creativity.  A simple recipe for great sustainable non-waste Christmas decorations that not only look, but also smell good!

The nice thing about sewing is that it is an ongoing learning process. No matter what time in your life you start because you will learn with every step and build your skills. Same as behaviour change, the day you start is the time when you start building your understanding and real actions.

SLP is working together with the Cooks River Alliance and UTS Shopfront to develop a website, an integrated communication strategy and educational resources suitable for CALD communities.

It does not matter if you are originally from Vietnam, Iraq, Spain, Sudan, and China or have been all your life in Australia to find something interesting about sustainable living. It does not matter if you have no idea at all about “what does even sustainability mean” because you will definitely learn about it in a simple yet rich and effective way.

Spring has started and the Latin Gardeners can’t stay quiet. After a productive and active winter the Latin Garden members have tasted the love for growing their own food. They will take it further by starting a very exciting new spring project showcasing the most emblematic traditional growing system: the Milpa (corn, beans, chilli and zucchini).

Our Vietnamese SLP bilingual educator Minh is delivering a series of workshops at MTC Australia. Read here more about his experiences so far!

Educators from the Ethnic Communities Sustainable Living program participated in a really interesting tour through Western Sydney organised by the Office of Environment and Heritage with the focus on engaging diverse communities in local environmental issues.

Funded by the Office of Environment and Heritage Save Power program, we have successfully developed and delivered Save Power workshop series in multiple community languages. Listen and read the stories of participants here that they have generously shared with us here, and be inspired!

On the 16th of June it was time to celebrate the great achievements of a group of Spanish speakers who successfully created a magnificent garden bed at Addison Road Centre.

If there is anything universal about human beings, it must be our love and passion towards food. If we love and enjoy food so much, then why waste it? Come and join Mariette and read about her Love Food Hate Waste project that converted many participants into food lovers and waste haters! 

For many people, composting can be daunting. But what if I say that composting can be done without a gigantic composting bin and a backyard? Enjoy the true story of Mary Zhang, one of our brilliant workshop participants, who reveals her secret composting practice that inspire so many already!

Who said Saving Energy has to be boring? Read this article written by Minh Hoang, our popular Vietnamese environmental educator, who organised a fun field trip to the Energy Efficiency Room for his HACC Vietnamese group as part of the Save Power Project. It’s truly a day of fun with loads of helpful information!

On Tuesday 19 March, the Redfern Town Hall was packed with people attending a forum organised by the Ethnic Communities' Coucil of NSW (including the SLP program) as part of the Living in Harmony Festival.

The Sustainable Living Project worked together with SLASA (Spanish and Latin American Association for Social Assistance Inc.) and a Spanish community group in order to tackle increasing waste and master how to recycle appropriately through the Step Together Project. Read more about this great initiative.

Do you miss your home country? Whenever you do, it can be soothing to cook what you have had in your childhood. Today Milagro from El Salvador wants to share her comfort food, while avoiding any food waste, as part of our Love Food Hate Waste recipe series. Have fun with trying out this awesome sustainable recipe!

Last year, the Ethnic Communities’ Council of NSW (ECC) started a new Multicultural Leadership Sustainability Project called ‘Step Together’. This project was offered to CALD organisations to support them to raise environmental awareness and implement projects to reduce waste, water or energy within the organisations and the communities they are working with.

Sustainable Living Project run by ECC and Tzu Chi Foundation formed a partnership to foster community leaders to protect. Now Adrian from Tzu Chi is telling us how beneficial partnership and workshops are to the foundation and are going to be to the CALD communities.

Put your hands up if you’d like to be Energy Super Star!

Bilingual Environmental Educator Mariette Mikhael, in collaboration with the Pakistani Australian Women Association (PAWA)and St George Migrant Resource Centre, have set up a wonderful initiative called ‘Green Corner’ from the Step Together Project. What is Green Corner all about? Mariette shares her experience with us...

A group of Spanish speaking ladies in the Shire started their exciting sustainability journey at the beginning of this year. Starting with a series of sustainable living workshops, they are now looking into starting their own community garden! Read more about their journey here... 

Waste has a very big impact on our community. The Marrickville community explores, learns and discusses how to tackle waste. “In the workshop, we discussed how we used to re-use and repair a lot more in Vietnam than we do here in Australia because often it is cheaper to just buy a new one” says Minh, our Vietnamese bilingual educator.

The bilingual environmental educator (BEE) team were out in force in the Canterbury Council area this month where they were linking up with Lana McGee the Biodiversity Project Officer at Canterbury City Council to train themselves up on biodiversity in the local area.
 

Winners of the Ethnic Communities’ Council Biodiversity Photo Competition Contest were announced at a celebration event at Lakemba Senior Citizen’s Centre on Wednesday 18th April. The photos revealed the beauty and diversity of Australian animals, birds and plants as well as showcasing the cultural diversity of the entrants.

A short documentary created by our bilingual educator Pilar Angon on the communal garden project at Beaconsfield Community Centre. An initiative of the South East Neighbourhood Centre and ECSLP.

During Earth Hour 2011 the ECSLP team were busily engaging with the community to raise awareness about this important environmental event and give practical ways of saving energy on the day and in the future.

The Kinetic Energy Theatre company's acclaimed and interactive performance "Village Space" took place at the ECC on Tuesday the 7th of December...

The ECC hosted Sydney's first Multicultural Leaders Forum on Climate Change in partnership with Auburn Community Development Network (ACDN) recently...

ECC was awarded the overall 2009 Premier's Sustainability Award for best project at the 10th Green Globe Awards.