Celebration Resources

Guest speakers

Your celebration provides an opportunity to build networks by inviting a community member to talk as a key note speaker.

Each school has their own networks into the local community and beyond.  Your celebration will provide an opportunity to build on these networks and relationships by inviting a member of your community in to talk as a ‘key note’ speaker at your celebration.  Often many people make the mistake of assuming that a key note speaker has to be a celebrity – but in fact, the best key note speakers are often those people who have the most interesting stories to share.

There are also organisations around Australia that aim to provide links to schools to support learning in sustainable living.  These organisations may also provide the opportunity to request key note speakers for your celebration activities.

• Al Gore Climate Change Presenters. There are now 162 presenters nation wide (as well as the original 84), personally trained by the Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore, who are actively engaged and committed to spreading the word on climate change. A presenter may be able to come to your school (with enough advance notice) though this group receive many requests and do not have the capacity to accommodate every request.
  
• Beyond Zero Emissions. If you are in Melbourne, the Beyond Zero Emissions campaign offers free speakers 
  
• Contact your local council environmental educator in NSW. If you are in NSW and are not sure who they are, you could have a look at the Local Government and Shires Association’s Towards Sustainable Communities website which lists education projects in some local council areas, including officer contact details.
  
• Contact your local council environmental educator elsewhere.  The Australian Local Government Association provides contact details of all local governments in Australia.  You can use these contact details to request a member of Council to come and talk at your celebration – often Councils tend to have a Waste Educator first and then an Environmental Educator, but you will also find Planning Staff and other technical professions within Council that are relevant.
  

Quotes about sustainable living

Quotes about sustainable living

Inspiring words from international environment groups, social leaders and Sustainable Living Challenge participants.

These quotes may be useful for introducing your projects and explaining the context of your sustainability challenge.  The range of quotes below are just a start, there are numerous websites full of quotations – we suggest that you research a series of quotes that relates to your vision and schools ethos and principles. Some of these quotes are included in our PowerPoint slide show that you can adapt to suit your own needs.

Living sustainably depends on a duty to seek harmony with other people and with nature. The guiding rules are that people must share with each other and care for the Earth. Humanity must take no more from nature than nature can replenish.

IUCN, UNEP, WWF (1991) Caring for the earth: Strategy for Sustainable Living, IUCN, UNEP, WWF, Switzerland.

Sustainable living must be the new pattern for all levels: individual, communities, nations, the world. To adopt the new pattern will require a significant change in the attitudes and practices of many people. We will need to ensure that education programmes reflect the importance of an ethic for living sustainably.

IUCN, UNEP, WWF (1991) Caring for the earth: Strategy for Sustainable Living, IUCN, UNEP, WWF, Switzerland.

We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny.

Earth Charter preamble

The problems we face today, violent conflicts, destruction of nature, poverty, hunger and so on, are human-created problems which can be resolved through human effort, understanding and the development of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. We need to cultivate a universal responsibility for one another and the planet we share.

The Dalai Lama, Better World website

It is not too late. God’s world has incredible healing powers. Within a single generation we could steer the earth towards our children’s future. Let that generation start now, with God’s help and blessing.

Pope John Paul II and Bartholomew 1, Joint Declaration on Environment, 2002

To sustain means to maintain, nourish and support life. Sustainability means using in a way that maintains and nourishes the environment and people. Living sustainably results, hopefully, in people and the earth surviving together for eternity.

Sustainable Living Challenge participants Tintern Anglican Girls Grammar School,

Sustainable living means not destroying and exhausting our planets resources. Each generation on earth is here for a very short time, after that, we must ensure that the next generation receives the fine resources we have. Sustainability ensures a clean planet for the many generations to come.

Sustainable Living Challenge participant Luke Fletcher (yr8) Marist Regional College

Sustainability means the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations and those after that. In other words, use only what you need when you need it. Sustainable living means the ability to live as one with the environment and to have the least amount of impact on the environment and the world will live in.

Sustainable Living Challenge participant Luke Bonham (Yr 12) Bathurst High School

Short Films

• 15 ways to avert a climate crisis: Al Gore Al Gore spells out 15 ways we can address climate change, from buying a hybrid car to inventing a hotter brand name for global warming.
  

• Inspired ideas for a sustainable future: Alex Steffen Worldchanging.com founder Alex Steffen offers a fast-paced round-up of radical (but possible) answers to our planet's greatest challenges, ranging from green cities and buildings, to digital collaboration tools, to ingenious tools for the developing world (flowers that detect landmines; straws that purify water as you drink).
  

• The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle: William McDonough Architect and designer William McDonough asks what our buildings and products would look like if designers took into account "All children, all species, for all time." He explains his philosophy of "cradle to cradle" design, which bridges the needs of ecology and economics. 
• 12 Sustainable design ideas from nature: Janine Benyus  Janine Benyus provides fascinating examples of biomimicry - the way humans mimic nature in the products we build and the systems we implement. And because the champion adapters in the natural world are, by definition, those that can survive without destroying the environment that sustains them, biomimicry can contribute to the long-term health of our planet.
  

• Building Alliances and On Globalisation, Julia Butterfly Hill Julia Butterfly Hill is an environmental activist who stayed in a tree for over two years to prevent the tree being cut down. Julia has two short talks on this site; ‘Building Alliances’ about creating our own media networks for people with common goals and ‘On Globalization; discussing the pressing need to globalise compassion and respect. 

• Sustainable Economics: Richard Douthwaite One for the economists – Richard Douthwaite is an economist, journalist and author exploring the economics driving climate change. 
  
• The Solar Sell, Renewable Futures: Mike Eckhart Mike Eckhart is the president of ACORE, a non-profit organisation that works to promote the use of renewable energy in the United States. He examines the likely development of renewable energy, different components of solar energy and the role for consumers in supporting solar power. 
  
• Biomimicry Explained: Janine Benyus Janine Benvus works as biologist helping designers and engineers learn from nature’s design solutions. She explains the concept of Biomimicry whereby nature’s design processes are used to address human problems sustainably. 
  

• Cyclovia – ‘life for the street’ is a Colombian concept that is catching on around the world, opening up roads for pedestrians and cyclists.  A short clip about cyclovia in Melbourne.

• A castle on the sand – Graham has built the most fantastic castle on the beach but the tide is rising and he’s not giving up without a fight. A short-fiction-comedy tackling climate change. 
  

• Happy School – an inspiring story of how ordinary people can become heroes through their willingness to care for others, a group of young Australians supporting education in Cambodia.
  
• Journey to reality – a documentary on discovering your roots, a story about a young Philippino Joe Natoli as he returns to the Philippines to learn more about where he comes from.