Action4Agriculture has recently received National Career’s Institute funding to pilot a best practice model for workforce development.
The target group is young people aged 15 to 24 who may fall through the cracks without the necessary support systems.
This will see us working with three groups of young people
- Young people still in school
- Young people who have left school
- Young people attending schools for specific purposes
If you are not familiar with the concept of schools for specific purposes let me introduce you to the Youth off the Streets (YOTS) model a passion project of Father Chris Riley.
We have been working with YOTS for a number of years and what a joy it is
This year Eden College at Macquarie Fields put their hands up to participate in The Archibull Prize. They recorded their learning journey on Wakelet
Equally working with the state governments version of YOTS like Penrith Valley Learning Centre who won The Archibull Prize in 2020 we are always just blown away by how deeply these young people think
Students who attend these schools often come from a childhood of adverse experiences, sometimes horrendous adverse experiences. These wonderful schools have very special teachers with the skills to turn their lives around and give them hope they can break the cycle of disadvantage and create a bright future for themselves.
Lets have a look at how Eden College took a deep dive into The Archibull Prize Challenge
The Big Idea
After conducting a vote, our class decided that we would research the UN’s SDG 2: Zero Hunger. We came to this decision after reflecting on the variety of ways different countries are impacted by hunger.
After looking into what ‘food insecurity’ means and understanding how different countries eat, we discovered the enormous amount of food wasted and discovered that humans waste 1/3 of all food produced! AND that there is enough food produced to feed everyone in the world but that due to wastage, people are food insecure. This was the main inspiration for our project.
With minimising food waste as our goal, we decided to look into alternate food sources that were both environmentally sustainable and would allow for greater food security internationally. We found out that billions of people are currently consuming insects as part of their diet. Despite our initial hesitation, we pursued this idea to understand that not only are these insects nutritious, they are cheap to farm and do not require as much energy, space or feed to produce in comparison to our traditional western forms of protein (eg. chicken, beef, pork etc).
We asked the students at Eden College to tells us what success looked like. This is what they said
Success in 2022 first and foremost looked like the completion of this project. Seeing the disappointment in not being able to bring the vision of our social action group to life in 2021 (due to COVID lockdowns) motivated us to do our best this year.
We also measured success by:
- collaborating on ideas and working well as a group to bring our vision to fruition
- learning about the UN’s SDGs (specifically zero hunger). We completed various activities and consumed information from the CSIRO, National Geographic and WHO to learn about Indigenous Australian hunting and gathering processes, Cambodian and Thai experiences with food insecurity and how to irradicate it.
- using this knowledge to come up with viable solutions
We believe as a class that we have achieved major success through this project and have inspired small changes within our school.
We asked them what they found EXCELLENT, UNFORTUNATE, SUPRISING
See what we mean, what a joy it is to work with young people who are ACTIVE and AWARE and have the capacity to help us #CreateABetterWorldTogether
Meet the Eden College’s Archibug