Taking Steps Together

14/03/2013

 

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.

Photo: Steps together

Three CALD organisations; Relationships Australia, NSW SLASA and SGMRC/PAWA nominated a staff member to participate in the Step Together Project. The nominated employees were individually mentored and received personal skills training from the ECC’s Sustainable Living Project’s bilingual educators.

The training and mentoring has successfully assisted the participating mentees to conceptualise, plan, and execute their own projects within their organisations and the communities they were working with.

Projects were very diverse and involved the local Council, community groups and other local organisations, and were very successful reaching out to the broader community. For example, Relationships Australia took on a project to reduce their waste and undertook an internal waste audit. Results and ways to reduce waste were shared with other offices, residents, community organisations and Councils. Relationships Australia also delivered a wormfarming workshop for primary school students, which was well attended and received with great enthusiasm.  Relationships Australia will continue to work on similar projects to increase sustainable living in the community, including recycling workshops and activities around energy efficiency.

One mentee commented: “I would say it was an excellent experience that gave me confidence to conduct information sessions on sustainable living and knowledge of the tools of project management. Also how I, as an individual can make a difference by managing my lifestyle to save this world. And as President of organization I can share the information and train more people to become the leaders and teach the community how to recycle and how to save the energy”.

By Fieke Geerts