Monthly Archives: September 2015
Using Research to instigate change
Posted by Peter MUIR
WWF-Hong Kong conducted the city’s first-ever study of the energy efficiency of commercial display refrigerators and discovered that refrigerators with sliding doors reduce power usage by up to 50%. With the energy consumption by refrigeration in Hong Kong increasing substantially, such research is a way of influencing policy and practice surrounding sustainable energy consumption.
How can research be a part of your CAS or Community Engagement?
Protect our elephants
Posted by Peter MUIR
Every year in Africa, over 30,000 elephants are killed, primarily to satisfy the demand for ivory in Asia. A new report by WWF-Hong Kong reveals seven fundamental weaknesses in the regulation of Hong Kong’s ivory market. These weaknesses enable illegal activities to flourish in the city, including the entry of smuggled ivory from poached elephants and the “laundering” of this illegal ivory through the city’s legal stock. As a result, Hong Kong is directly fuelling the poaching of elephants in Africa.
WWF are calling on the government to rewrite the future of elephants by banning the sale and processing of ivory in Hong Kong. Your support is vital to the survival of these majestic animals. Sign the petition now to show that you care about saving Africa’s elephants. But that is not all you could do – get involved in taking further action. Use the Community Engagement framework to assist you in developing your ideas to help reduce Hong Kong’s importation of illegal ivory.
Chungking mansion Centre for Refugees
Posted by Peter MUIR
Christian Action’s Centre For Refugees at Chungking Mansions is a well-established service provider assisting those in need in HK. The centre relies on donors and sponsors to continue the work that they are doing.
How could raising awareness about the centre and the issues they engage with be a part of your community engagement? If you were to choose to fund raise for the centre, how would you do so in a creative way (ie not another bake sale proposal)?
CAS Project with Lizzie Bee
Posted by Peter MUIR
Click here for more details – Lizzie Bee CAS project
Mother’s Choice “Families Walking for Families” Walkathon
Posted by Peter MUIR
Mother’s Choice is hosting their second annual Walkathon on Sunday, 1st November 2015! Through the Walkathon, they hope to raise funds to help build families through Mother’s Choice four key services that restore, build and provide support to families. The event consists of a 4k walk along the scenic Bowen Road, followed by a Carnival including food, games, and entertainment for all ages. As well as participants, Mother’s Choice is looking for volunteers to help on the day of the event! Students will be paired in groups of 2-4 to run the activity booths at the Carnival.
For more information on the Walkathon, please visit the event website. To sign up as a volunteer, please email volunteers@motherschoice.org.
Ark Eden CAS Project opportunity
Posted by Peter MUIR
Ark Eden’s 2015-2016 CAS project provides you with an excellent opportunity to learn new skills and take action for the natural environment. The project will concentrate on developing leadership skills within a range of areas with all Creative, Action and Service components included in this major undertaking. The principle component of this years CAS project will be to train you to manage and lead environmental-permaculture activities with groups of young students Skills that you will acquire will include: Leadership, team work and communication Effective teaching and learning methods All element of safety required in transporting and managing groups of young children Researching, planning, time-tabling and other logistics for group activities Managing resources, setting up and down programmes Documenting permaculture programme content Creating a Perma-scout blog and newsletter
Click here for more details and registration – Ark Eden CAS Project 2015 – Environmental leadership.
DB Beach Clean-ups 2015
Posted by Peter MUIR
Though taking part in a beach clean up is a noble cause, aside from Year 7 students this alone is generally not accepted as a CE experience. A short, once-off engagement is not what we are looking for in CE. However getting involved in a number of clean ups, and taking more action in other ways to help our oceans become cleaner, is more like what we are after.
This message below from DB Green’s Kate Wade outlines some ways you can support DB green in addition to participating in beach clean ups.
Our beaches, as you may have noticed, can look like a trash site on some days (dare I say MOST)! We at DB Green and Plastic Free Seas know that removing rubbish from the beach is a great place to get it before it heads back out to the ocean. In the ocean it breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces but without ever fully biodegrading and is ingested by our bird and sea life.
There are a number of project ideas you can get from being involved in the Beach Cleanups.
For our younger participants turning up to a beach cleanup, picking up rubbish and observing what it is, connecting it to how and when your family and friends use these destructive single use items, is a great start.
For some of the older students we’d like to see you also put in a hard days work at the beach cleanups and try and take it a step further. Perhaps focusing on what kinds of rubbish you see as a major problem and thinking about a campaign to stop it’s use…. Maybe adopting a particular area that you want to focus on and keep clean throughout the school year, maybe finding out the source of a particular type of rubbish, maybe educating others about the problems, etc etc- whatever interests you!
We also need helpers to co-ordinate and help at the beach cleanups, take names, time in and out of participants, help explain the do’s and don’ts and show how to do a beach cleanup.
We need someone to make sure the information goes into the Explorer, plus other types of advertising you can do at the school and community beforehand. In fact I need a volunteer or 2 for that right now please to get the information to the Explorer for this Friday for Saturday and Mondays cleanup. Can someone please go ahead and contact the Explorer organisers please?? Any year 10 or older students able to do this please? Let me know once it’s done please.
I am sure Tracey and Dana have more projects in mind and lots of ideas that may inspire you. A good way to get started is to turn up this Saturday at Nim Shue Wan beach between 1pm to 4pm (the beach on the way to the Marina club) and we can talk with you there about ideas for your CAS activity this year. If you can’t make that one maybe the main beach after the lantern festival on Monday between 8am and 10am.
We want you to find something that motivates you! Start thinking about what you want to do with your CAS activity this school year and aim to make a difference. And we are here to help.
I hope to see you at a beach cleanup on Saturday plus I’l aim to meet with any of you at school lunch time the week after next. Email me (kate.wade@dbgreen.org) if you need any assistance.
Global Goals
Posted by Peter MUIR
The Global Goals for Sustainable development will be introduced next week, September 25th. The goals take over from the Millennium Development goals, which led to improvement but were not actually achieved. Watch the video below on these goals, which may provide you with an idea for your own goal for your Community Engagement efforts. Investigate the issues surrounding these goals, develop your own SMART goal based on one of the 17 goals, create an action plan, and then act!
The Worlds Largest Lesson Introduced by Malala Yousafzai from World’s Largest Lesson on Vimeo.
We will live in what world?
Posted by Peter MUIR
On September 25th 2015, 193 world leaders will commit to 17 Global Goals to achieve 3 extraordinary things in the next 15 years. End extreme poverty. Fight inequality & injustice. Fix climate change. The Global Goals for sustainable development could get these things done. In all countries. For all people.
Here is you chance to star in the We the People video and tell everyone about the future you want to see. Pick one of the #GlobalGoals that mean the most to you and film yourself, and potentially feature in the final film alongside Ashton Kutcher, Bill and Melinda Gates, Malala Yousafzai, One Direction, Richard Branson, and Stephen Hawking, among others.
Then, of course, you can think about what you can do to help achieve these goals.
