Youth Jammin’ for the Environment

14 September 2007

Youth Jammin’ for the Environment

The Enviroschools Youth Jam is a national environmental event for secondary school students and their teachers. The event is based around a youth-teaching-youth model with 150 students from 28 schools will taking part.

The overarching theme for the event is Climate Change. While it is an issue of truly global proportions, New Zealand students are taking action that has a positive impact on climate change – such as reducing waste, planting trees and promoting sustainable transport options.

The Youth Jam will include workshops run by students for students and a panel discussion with scientists, politicians and environmentalists.

Students will give back to the mauri of the local environment by helping with replanting projects on the shores of Lake Rotorua.

Rather than a traditional conference style event the Youth Jam will be a multi media high-energy event featuring dance, music, comedy, film and the spoken word. Acclaimed reggae roots band Cornerstone Roots are performing, as are Soul Speed an environmental dance theatre troupe who are well known on the summer festival scene. A number of high profile New Zealanders have sent video messages of support to students – including Helen Clark, John Key, Jeanette Fitzsimons, Anton Oliver and Stephen Tindall.

Te Rawhitiroa Bosch, Youth Coordinator for the Enviroschools Programme comments that; “Sustainability is not about simply mitigating negative environmental impacts. It is about creating a surplus of positive energy, giving more than we take, manaaki, caring for all living things, not just people. We want to make Youth Jam is a sustainable event and create a positive climate for us all to Jam in.”

Enviroschools is a nationwide sustainable schools programme run by The Enviroschools Foundation in collaboration with a number of national and regional agencies. The approach is to build a network of schools committed to a long-term change process. Enviroschools is a framework for education, not simply a project that is ‘done’ and then left for some other topic. Nationally there are now 500 schools participating in the Enviroschools Programme – including 17% of our nation’s secondary schools.

The Enviroschools Youth Jam has been organised in response to the groundswell of enthusiasm for environmental education among secondary schools. Te Rawhitiroa explains, “ At the end of the event we want students and teachers to have deepened their knowledge about climate change, have new ideas and enhanced skills to take action and have strategies to engage others in environmental issues.”

ENDS

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