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Overview
A prestigious national schools program, the Sustainable Living Challenge is run in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme and is endorsed by the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014).
The Sustainable Living Challenge is the peak national education for sustainability program in Australia. It engages young people, their teachers and their communities in the innovative learning challenges presented by sustainable living.
It has been running successfully since 1998 and is closely aligned with the Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative and corresponding state and territory based initiatives.
It is completely free for you to participate and it provides a myriad of opportunities for you and your school. Submissions close on the last Friday of October each year, judging takes place throughout November, and the Sustainable Living Champions are announced in December.
The Sustainable Living Challenge:
- is relevant to all subject and key learning areas given the interrelated nature of the challenges of sustainability
- provides access to free ongoing support to assist teachers to integrate the program into existing curriculum and teaching activities and also to foster learning outcomes
- acts as an umbrella program - all sustainability projects undertaken in the school are relevant - use the program to obtain national recognition for your existing activities
- values all projects by emphasising learning and participation over competition
- provides avenues for internal, local and state recognition at many levels - every project is celebrated from small first steps upwards
- profiles and celebrates leading practice sustainability education initiatives.
The Sustainable Living Challenge builds the capacity of students, teachers and their school. Involvement has many benefits for your school including:
- providing an ongoing perennial program that helps to focus the school's capacity to respond to sustainability
- inspiring and extending students at all levels and stages
- providing a platform for integrated and cross curricular units
- connecting you to a national network of teachers and schools working on sustainability projects
- enhancing and invigorating teaching by providing a meaningful and significant context for rich learning
- assisting to embed action-focused initiatives into curriculum as a rich task or teaching and learning project
- differentiating your school as being actively involved in the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014).
The Sustainable Living Challenge supports numerous policies and initiatives including:
- state and federal policies and statements - including the recent "Educating for a Sustainable Future" the national environmental education statement for Australian schools;
- quality teaching frameworks;
- School Environment Management Planning (SEMP's);
- Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative (AuSSI) and all state and terriotry based sustainable schools programs;
- professional teaching standards and accreditation processes;
- complimenting new state based curriculum objectives (such as VELS, New Basics etc).
The program is based in Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of New South Wales. Griffith University manages the program in Queensland as the state partner. The Sustainable Living Challenge is a key part of each University's commitment to meaningful engagement with the community and demonstrates an important role that Universities can play in assisting schools to tackle the challenges presented by sustainable living.
