Sue Martin
The 2014 Earth Hour breakfast at Saint Ignatius’ College (SIC), Riverview in Sydney, Australia gathered together about 200 people for a very busy morning of linking, learning, and sharing.
The breakfast gathering included students, staff, parents, and environment leaders from 26 schools from all over Sydney. There were also members of the local environment community, local council educators, local environmental education centres and environment groups such as the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and Cool Australia. They all gathered to listen to Chris Andrews from Australian Documentaries who talked about Habitat the Game, Steve Healey from Tennis Australia who shared their environmental wins, Engineers without Borders Australia with their solar cookers, and Andrew Campion, the founder of Freshie and who talked about going bottle-free in the school canteen. There was also a display from Composting Cannon, the easy one-step composting solution.
Each year the environment leaders at SIC create a video to inspire action within the school and in the past, this video was shared on the Earth Hour website. The breakfast does cost a small amount to cover the food but it is over by 9:00 am and everyone goes back to school, so school time lost is minimal.
This year, schools went away with lucky door prizes such as mini solar cookers, water bottles, and the table displays created by the boys with mini-vegetable gardens to start a small garden back at each school. The school executives are very supportive of the sustainability programs undertaken by the SIC Environment Committee and show their support by attending the breakfast.
SIC Riverview has held Earth Hour breakfast for school environment leaders for the past six years. It is a chance to come together to listen to a talk by an inspiring speaker, share breakfast and have conversations with other school leaders with a focus on going beyond Earth Hour. It is a great prompt for schools to know they are connected to a worldwide event and students and teachers go back to each school to pass on the ideas and work within their communities to create change to care for the environment.
For more information on the SIC Earth Hour breakfast, please contact Ms Sue Martin, the SIC Sustainability Officer through her email smmartin(at)riverview.nsw.edu,au.
