After their successful foray into the world of Kreative Koalas in 2019, when they were awarded Grand Champion Community Project for Change for raising awareness of healthy waterways, Medowie Christian School are this year tackling zero hunger.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2: Zero Hunger is being investigated by students for the first time in 2020 and teacher Martha Atkins is excited to see changes in student thinking already.

 “One of our boy’s fathers works with AOG Medowie Foodway and he told us that Foodway supports 1500 families in Port Stephens, which is 10% of our population. This  was an eye-opening statistic for students. They thought zero hunger only applied to homeless people. They did not realise there were people and families who had a house and jobs who were experiencing difficult times. It has not been a hard job to get them to engage with this goal – they are excited about doing something to help.” Martha says

Whilst the students initially wanted to create a food bank within their school one of the things the students learnt from participating in KK 2019 was if you want to have community impact it’s important to meet the needs of the community and so began a journey of community consultation. The students created a survey which they shared with their family and friends.

“The feedback from the surveys showed us the community felt a larger priority was teaching our community about growing fruit and vegetables in a sustainable way and that has become our focus,” Martha says.

Complementing Kreative Koalas, Medowie Christian School is simultaneously participating in OzHarvest’s FEAST program, which aims to inspire “kids to eat healthy, waste less and be change-makers in their local community.” The final product of FEAST will be a school cookbook.

 “FEAST will tie in really well with Kreative Koalas and zero hunger.  We are a K-12 school so we have an agriculture teacher and our own school plot so we grow a lot of our own vegetables and will be using our own resources. We are looking at making our school garden a sustainable garden.” Martha says.

Another surprising outcome from Medowie’s community survey was the number of people who did not know about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

“60% of those surveyed didn’t know of, or couldn’t explain, the SDGs and when the kids saw that they thought ‘oh that’s easy – we can fix that one  The students are making a video about SDGs and are enthusiastic about sharing information on their blog. “Although we’ve chosen zero hunger, if we want to see real change, we need to make all the goals famous.” Martha says.

Congratulations Medowie Christian School on your wonderful start to the 2020 Kreative Koalas program – we look forward to watching your journey and your contribution towards Zero Hunger. AND raising awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals and inspiring others to join the movement to achieve them.

You can follow the students on their blog here 

Listen to Martha Atkins share the students journey with ABC Newcastle

#KreativeKoalaKids #GobalGoals #SDGs #bthechange #behaviourchange #sustainability