NEST News
Nossal Environmental Summit 2021
NEST is the official environmental and sustainability team at Nossal where we aim to inform on how they can partake in creating active change in our daily habits that we have that impact the natural environment. On August 26, NEST hosted a summit in which we brought together students from multiple schools (Nossal High School, Koo Wee Rup Secondary College, Kambrya College and Beaconhills College) in which they undertook multiple activities and listened to a panel of speakers in order to build their knowledge on the theme of this year’s summit, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”. The online mode of the summit did not prevent the students from getting the most out of this opportunity and engaging with the speakers and other students. Congratulations to Rasna Preman and Jessica Mai Nguyen for hosting and planning the summit with the help of Ms Ooi and the NEST Planning Committee.
The day was packed with many activities in order to fully engage the students in an informative, insightful day. The day began with an icebreaker including a bingo and some rebus puzzles to get the activity groups of the day to become comfortable around each other. After this, a video was presented by Professor David Karoly, chief research scientist at CSIRO and Melbourne University Professor, followed by a discussion within Activity Groups in which they were able to dissect the scientific side of the climate crisis. After this, the next speaker of the day, Mandy Robertson, Education Director at Dolphin Research Institute, presented a
speech to everyone on the harmful effects of Fast Fashion and revealed multiple facts that shocked much of the audience and reflected how much we were really contributing to the damage done to the environment in our everyday activities. The next segment of the summit involved a QnA panel in which the speakers Professor David Karoly and Mandy Robertson were joined by Lucy Skelton, Founder and CEO at the Student Voice Network and 2020 Student of the Year.
This QnA segment allowed students to ask any burning questions they had to the panel of experts and we were very pleased to see so much participation from the audience with a large proportion of the students suggesting this segment was their favourite of the whole summit. After this segment, there was a 15 minute break provided for everyone take from their screens.
Once everyone had returned, panel speaker, Lucy Skelton, ran a workshop on how to start projects that you are passionate about - another highly favoured segment of the summit. Following this, NEST organised an activity in order to test everyone’s knowledge on how well they can sort rubbish into their appropriate forms of disposal. The activity segment of the summit concluded with a fun session run by one of Nossal High School’s passionate teachers, Ms Bonham, who shared some of her creative ideas for ways in which people can reuse items around the house to create cool pieces of art including jewellery, gift cards and
even blankets. The students were then able to have a 40 minute lunch break.
After the lunch break, students were able to reflect on their day and provide feedback as well as paste all their ideas for the future in this padlet- https://padlet.com/rasna2102/hj8z25bmtamtzpjs. Do check out the padlet for any ideas you may want to try out at home yourself!
Overall, it was described as an enjoyable but equally informative event in which students could work with groups from other schools to complete activities and build on their knowledge on how reusing and recycling benefits the environment.
Some exciting things coming up in NEST include works on an Indigenous Garden being built next to the school car park as well as possibly a creative session run by Ms Bonham on reusing everyday items (if we are back at school for Term 4).
Contact -
Hamza Ahmed (AHM0003@students.nossalhs.vic.edu.au), Jessica Nguyen (NGU0120@students.nossalhs.vic.edu.au) or Rasna Preman (PRE0006@students.nossalhs.vic.edu.au) if interested in joining NEST.
Please join the Student Voice Network - founder was one of the speakers, Lucy Skelton. The Student Voice Network is a virtual platform through which like-minded people between the ages of 13-30 who are passionate about issues on social or environmental justice can meet together to plan and make active change. It is completely run BY and FOR youth so make sure to go check it out!
SVN Contact Details: studentvoicenetwork@gmail.com
Padlet Link:
School // Home Environmentally Friendly Tasks (padlet.com)
Rithika Anilkumar, Nandita Chandran Akshaya Kajendra & Rasna Preman
Year 11