The Penrith SSA Graduation
 1st March 2008

Mulgoa and Penrith City Gardens Graduate as the latest Penrith SSA Villages

What better way to spend a sunny first day of autumn, than at an SSA Graduation ceremony out in the bush, at the beautiful Muru Mittigar in Cranebrook!? 

After a fantastic didgeridoo solo and welcome to country, and a short presentation by Dave from Vox, Penrith Mayor Greg and Councillor Karen, presented certificates to the SSA graduates from the Mulgoa (‘The Mulgoa Growers’) and the Penrith City Gardens Villages (‘The Penrith City Greenthumbs’.)  Both villages have ‘sow’ projects lined up, working with Mulgoa Public School and Mamre house respectively, on two very exciting gardening projects, with assistance from Penrith Council.

Perhaps the highlight of the day, as well as the fine weather, the beautiful setting, not to mention the fabulous lunch, was to hear first hand from Irene, Lee, Gretel and facilitator Vanessa, about their experiences of being part of new Sustainability Street Villages.

There are now six SSA villages to have graduated in Penrith and it was great to see, Brain, Shirley and Joyce, from the Banool Avenue Village, one of the first Penrith Villages, established in 2005 and still going strong. 

Three cheers to Carmel, Krystie and Louise for a great job organising the day...hip hip, hooray, ...hip hip, hooray, ...hip hip, hooray, ...hip hip, ....
 

The Sustainability Street Approach (SSA) @ Gravity Youth Centre – Wyong Shire

At Gravity Youth Centre in Wyong Shire we are running Sustainability Street with a group of incredibly amazing, diverse and energetic young people. Some just want to learn about sustainability but not get their "hands dirty", others just want to jump straight in and start. We have been extremely lucky at Gravity because Master Foods Australia and New Zealand has come on board to sponsor the program.
 
We are really encouraging the ideals of sharing and learning new skills. This also applies to the Mentors. Despite being a Youth Worker for over 10 years, I had never learnt how to do Graffiti Art. We are lucky at our youth centre in that we have a large legal graffiti wall. It was with much shock and horror to the young people that I went out to start a piece* on the wall last Thursday.  So after hearing their not so quiet discussion from the adjoining skate park around,"what is she doing, bet she can't do it, she's one of those tree huggers ..." it soon developed into a shouting conversation over the ramps of the skate park, around what sustainability is and how on earth do you pronounce it.  So after challenging the young people to not only have a go at the wall but also to hear about what sustainability means, I ended with a group of 5 boys and 3 girls who all had a turn at writing up on the wall what the program is about. These young people also had limited experience with using spray cans, so they were in good company.
 
We continued to work on the “piece”*  for the rest of the afternoon, generating discussion about the program and having many community members stop and read as they walked by.  Talk about free advertising space!  I now have a new found respect for graffiti artists ... not as easy as it looks!

Our SSA program will be run with a project already in mind. Some of the young people that attend the youth centre have backgrounds of trauma and abuse with a number experiencing grief and loss issues. These courageous young people have identified that they would like to construct a healing garden. This will be a safe and supported quiet place for reflection where they can go and recognise that this has been their life journey so far, they acknowledge the emotions that they have felt, but recognise that they are strong enough to move forward. They are saying that life is a journey and this is the path they choose to take. The principles of SSA will be the learning tool to develop the garden, eg: selecting the right plants and soils etc.  It is envisaged that this garden will be planted directly into a preloved wooden boat, symbolising their journey. This will truly be a powerful and motivating experience for those involved.  
Another little thing we have initiated at Gravity in an attempt to cut down on the amount of paper used to generate posters, pamphlets etc, is that my office door is now a blackboard used solely to advertise Sustainability Street
 
PS - after 5 days of being on the wall no one has gone over our piece or tagged it. This is significant in that as a legal graffiti wall, anyone can use it at anytime and go over the pieces that are already there. We survived a weekend so that tells me that people are reading and respect the message.
 
 

23/07/2007  Sustainability Street Project First meeting, Blacktown Girls High School ‘village’!

Blacktown Girls HS student’s SSA project to save the world! On Monday 23rd July, Frank from Vox Bandicoot had the profound joy and privilege of working with an inspiring team of year nine students from Blacktown Girls High School! This group, who call themselves Students Saving the World (SSW), is the latest Sustainability Street Village to emerge from the pioneering Blacktown City Council.   Together only a short time, SSW already has an impressive list of achievements, too long to mention here, but including participating in the 'Future Problem Solving Program' sponsored by Macquarie Bank. To improve biodiversity and to move towards making their school carbon neutral, SSW has organised a tree planting for the 26th July 2007 to create a wildlife corridor in the school grounds.   We look forward to working with this amazing group as they develop a native and bush tucker garden as part of their Sustainability Street Project.   And, after they’ve saved the world, they’ll move onto their next project, sending the first all female crew to Mars, in a bio-diesel fueled spaceship ...next year!