Five schools are set to benefit from one of Australia’s largest and most iconic charities supporting one of Picture You in Agriculture’s (PYiA) flagship programs.

St Vincent de Paul’s NSW Bushfire Recovery and Community Development Program is supporting PYiA to expand the reach of Kreative Koalas, growing our collaborations with other social and environmental nonprofits.

The schools – Bomaderry Public School, Hilltop Public School, Nowra East Public School, Robertson Public School and St George Basin PS – are located in Wingecarribee, in the NSW southern highlands, and Shoalhaven in the state’s southeast. Both areas were badly affected by the horrific 2019-2020 bushfires that swept across Australia.

 

“Through our collaborations with organisations like St Vincent de Paul and OzHarvest, through its FEAST program, we are nourishing both our country and our wellbeing,” says Lynne Strong, founder and national program director of PYiA.

John Fenech, the manager of Community Development Bushfire Recovery at St Vincent de Paul Society of NSW said that the charity was delighted to be joining forces with PYiA.

“’Vinnies’ and PYiA share common values in both being organisations focused on social justice and systemic change.

“Kreative Koalas inspires young people to investigate and reflect on global environmental and sustainability issues and translate that learning into action at a local level in their communities.” he says.

 The Vinnies Bushfire Recovery and Community Development Program has three major areas of focus – future preparedness and building resilience, community cohesion, and environmental regeneration and sustainability.

“Vinnies views Kreative Koalas as aligning with all three, but particularly the resilience building and environmental sustainability,” says John.

Teachers say that the schools wanted to participate in Kreative Koalas program as they are “sustainability-driven” and already have existing innovative projects using kitchen gardens and recycling.

“We have community members who engage with these initiatives and as a school we are engaging action learning projects as a way of extending student thinking and engagement,” says one.

Another praises Kreative Koalas as a “leadership development program”, and wants to use it to build relationships between their school, the community, industry and business, as well as support students transitioning to secondary school. Another says that they had signed up to the program to teach pupils about “not living in such a throwaway society”. Others want their students to challenge themselves and to develop teamwork skills to allow them to communicate and work together effectively in the future.

Kreative Koalas along with The Archibull Prize and Young Farming Champions, PYiA’s other world-class flagship programs, aim to showcase the diversity of careers and career pathway opportunities in the agriculture sector.

We thank all our partners who are investing in the future by empowering young Australians to solve tomorrow’s problems today

 

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