Millennium Kids partnership with Enitiate

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The mentoring component of Millennium Kids got a boost recently when we joined forces with Enitiate, a student organisation established to give Engineering students exposure to real world projects. Enitiate collaborate with community partners to give students at all different levels of their university studies the opportunity to work on the ideation, feasibility, and scoping stages of technical projects.

With this partnership we are targeting improving some of the infrastructure at the WeSAVE school in Dompu, Indonesia. Our first project with Enitiate, in semester one of 2024, looked at the feasibility of collecting, treating and storing rainwater at the school. The students had to understand the climate of Dompu, issues of water quality, water consumption at the school, roof catchment opportunities, and available physical and financial resources. The report they prepared provides the school with a planning framework to apply at all different stages of water management, from present and future infrastructure development and management, to water storage and use.

We were delighted when Enitiate offered us the opportunity to partner with them again in second semester. WeSAVE are extremely grateful for the input, and also for the recognition that such partnerships provide their small, rural school. We spoke with the school about their priorities, and were able to give Enitiate a few project choices. We have just had our first meeting with the project group, who this semester will be working on the potential for making the existing fish farm more efficient, and the possibility of expanding it into a more productive aquaculture system. They will look at design of biological filtration systems that can strip nutrients from the fish tanks to grow additional food.

This current project has two links to the previous semester’s report. Firstly, maintaining water quality in the fish farm currently uses a lot of water, and, as the previous report showed we don’t have a lot to spare, so any conservation is valuable. Secondly, a couple of the students from last semester have chosen to work on this project as well. This gives great continuity to the partnership between Enitiate and the school, and underlines the Enitiate vision to “provide a platform for sustainable relationships, in which students gain practical and professionally focused skills, Enitiate’s community partners further their cause, and the engineering industry connects with a driven student community”.

While the Enitiate collaboration provides us with information, rather than hard advice as may be expected by a client later in the career of the students, the reports will be very valuable resources for MK and WeSAVE for the next phase, as we seek funding and partnerships to make these projects happen on the ground.

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Kids’ Tree Action

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Young people from the City of Cockburn Reference Group rocked the tree planting this week. Earlier in the term the young people spent an afternoon with Cat, MK CEO, looking at the big challenges in their community. They catergorised change making ideas and voted to plant some trees to help increase canopy and cool the planet. They registered their project at Green Lab , Millennium Kids program to protect, monitor and increase canopy across our city. The team received a Green Lab grant to make their project real and yesterday the planting ceremony happened with two trees being planted outside the City of Cockburn carpark near the Civic Centre buildings. We look forward to watching these trees grow.

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Look Who Has a Mentor

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When Chris pitched an idea for a water system that collected data about whether water was safe or not at the AFS Global STEM Innovators program, she had no idea it would lead her to be mentored by 2021 National Professional Environmental Engineer, Dr Raj Kurup. Chris met him last week at an Enviro Sundowner with the Minister for Environment and Climate Action, Reece Whitby, at a community event in Riverton.

“It was an amazing experience. I came to talk about the need for climate action education in my role as youth facilitator with Millennium Kids, the mentoring partner from AFS Global STEM Innovators – so imagine my surprise when I met my chosen MK Mentor, Dr. Kurup.  Finding out that he was the environmental engineer of the year was an added bonus! I was over the moon with excitement and I am really looking forward to see what we could do together!”

 

 

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Vision 2072 Como Foreshore

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Grace’s painting shows the view looking from the Como Jetty back at Preston Street, Como. The road has been replaced by a blue pathway that represents a river flowing down to the Swan River with a stepping stone pathway along the edge. The yellow starfish represent the end of the path and shows that you’ve reached the beach which has sea creatures on it. The shallow water is the pale blue with the dark blue representing deeper water. There are walls made from old bricks and native trees have been planted. Nesting boxes and hollows in the trees provide homes to animals even if the trees are not big enough to have natural hollows. Further along the road is a garden that has food plants for people and animals to use when they want to. The bird flying overhead represents Cat in the future coming back to see what changes have been made from our visions

Millennium Kids had the opportunity to work with Indigenous  custodians, on country, as  part of a Vision 2071 workshop in July this year. As part of a series of Como Beaching Yarning sessions the final session asked ” What do we want the future Preston Street to look like?” Ideas will be collated and used to develop place based workshops for young people to get to know the local area.

 

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6. Reduce Plastic

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It’s Plastic Free July, that time of year when you consider your waste footprint and aim to reduce the plastic in your life. Siddharth, a changemaker at Millennium Kids , wants you to use this month to kick off his campaign, Agents of Climate Change Power of Positive Pranking Book Week.

Number 6. Reduce Plastic is big on Siddharth’s agenda

SOME FACTS:

Here are 12 interesting  things you might not know about plastic to get you thinking.

  1. Only 9% of all plastic produced is recycled
  2. A whopping 2 million plastic bags are used every minute worldwide
  3. Single-use plastics are illegal in some parts of the world
  4. Every minute of every day a truckload of plastic is dumped into the ocean
  5. 73% of beach litter worldwide is plastic
  6. One million plastic bottles are bought every minute
  7. There could be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050
  8. Up to 95% of plastic polluting oceans is carried by 10 rivers
  9. 99% of seabirds will be eating plastic by 2050
  10. The average person eats 70,000 microplastics each year
  11. The average time that a plastic bag is used is just 12 minutes
  12. Over the past 50 years, world plastic production has doubled

Reference 12 Facts about Plastic Pollution 

So what will you do to help changemakers like Siddharth. Will you please help him by joining his campaign, supported by the City of Canning.

WHAT TO DO:

Can you check out your plastic consumption as part of Siddharth’s 10 Actions To Reduce our Carbon Footprint? Take a photo to show us what you do and send it to siddharth@millenniumkids.com.au to be in the draw for a copy of “The Power of Positive Pranking”presented by the book’s author Nat Amoore at a special Book Week event at Willetton Library on 25th August 2023.
Submit your action by 5pm Friday 11th August 2023.
Power of Postive Pranking Terms and Conditions

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All animals needs a home!

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Isabelle is keenly aware of the state of the environment. She is regularly out and about in nature and is extremely concerned about the plight of the Carnaby’s Black Cockatoos in her area. At our recent Millennium Kids event we were able to give Isabelle a grant, thanks to the generous donations that come in through members of the public.

Isabelle will use the grant funds to run a workshop to share the story of the birds and teach people how to make nest boxes appropriate for these birds, because all animals need a home. Watch out Simon Cherriman – you are going to get a call.

Thanks to the City of Canning for supporting young people through the Changing Our World program, where young people can pitch ideas to change their world.

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Agents of Climate Change Toolkit

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The kids have launched their climate action project – The Agents of Climate Change Project.

Follow their simple steps to inspire your students to take action locally.

Simply:

  • Watch the film Regenerating Australia
  • Do the Cool Australia curriculum activities with your class
  • Book an Agents of Climate Change Deliberation Day
  • Randomly select 5 students from your region to join us in April 2023 for a leadership camp
  • Present the Agents for Climate Change Report to stakeholders
  • MK and partners to fund projects
  • Evaluate using our Agents of Change Tool and report to funders and stakeholders

Download the Toolkit Agents of Climate Change Toolkit Final and email to let us know you are on board.

Funded and support by the US Government.

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PROJECT CO2

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PROJECT CO2 is a business, run by Kids, that is still rising up. Our cause to to shut every factory for one day a month because CO2 goes up into the atmosphere and it slowly creating a problem for our planet.

We are currently exploring this issue and are designing stickers to get our community thinking about this big issue. We are pitching for $500 or $1000 to get our stickers printed.

SAS Kids, Spearwood Alternative School

MK Mentors, Cat and Wayne, are thrilled these kids are working so hard on their CO2 project and will send them a copy of Earth Matters, Loving our Planet, by Carole Wilkinson and Hilary Cresp,  to help them understand the complexity of climate change and the impact of CO2. 

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Green Lab – Milyu Nature Reserve Planting Day

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Grey skies and windy conditions didn’t deter our team of dedicated MK Youth Board members and their parents as they planted 1000 seedling shrubs, ground covers and sedges along a stretch of river foreshore sandwiched between the Kwinana Freeway and the Swan River.

 Paul Reed from City of South Perth prepared the site and had all of the necessary tools so we could get on with the job of transforming this area that is battered by wind and salt water for much of the year and scorched in the summer into potential habitat for migratory birds from the northern hemisphere.

Milyu is a really important feeding area for migrating shore birds. It is also where the first MK project started. This morning we were joined by Brett Jackson who was there at the very beginning. He shared the story of 25 years ago when Cat and students from South Perth Primary school started the project and pointed out the successful plantings from that time.

It is hard to imagine that the dense vegetation adjacent to where we were planting today was once as sparse as where we were.

Thanks to Bella, Claire, Hannah, Isabelle, Matt, Niamh, David, Nicole, Annie, Aelwen and Heather for your efforts. Thanks also to Jamie from Perth Intrepid Landcare who came along to find out what MK is all about and stayed to help with the planting. We hope that this is the beginning of networking between our two organisations. Check out their Facebook https://www.facebook.com/PerthIntrepidLandcare

Jacob, Emily and Shane joined us for morning tea when the clouds cleared and the sun came out for a short time. We chatted over a cuppa and Heather’s delicious chocolate cup cakes.

A summary of our thoughts

  • planting very worthwhile to help reduce erosion.
  • the location was different from what we usually go. Good to actually get into the strip that we usually go whizzing past on the freeway .
  • it’s disappointing to see the rubbish
  • the information sign about the significance of birds and their species

We had a great discussion about how important these third Sundays are for people to get together and keep in touch.

Thanks to Aelwen and Heather for coordinating this event.

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Green Lab Explore – Kids’ Report

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I attended two Green Labs during the April school holidays with indigenous artist, Marli.

Green Lab Kids Explore

Monday, 11/4/2022 at Piney Lakes Environmental Education Centre Education Centre. This Green Lab program was funded by the City of Melville and supported by Propel Youth Arts WA for the KickstART Festival Youth Week WA. We started the event with a nature walk. We found trees that needed one, two or three people to stretch around the trunk in a hug. We all received eco journals to draw pictures or write in. When we returned from the walk, we each decided what we’d like to paint to represent our vision for 2050. We sketched our designs on canvases and began painting our vision canvases. Marli will take all our ideas and create one vision 2050 painting. We cant wait to see it.

Vic Park’s Green Future Workshop – Green Lab For Kids

This was on 12/4/2022 at the Community Centre on Etwell Street funded by the Town of Victoria Park. At this event a group of young people met and started with a nature walk with eco journals in Jirdarup Bushland (also known as Kensington Bushland), then we formed a circle and closed our eyes, envisioning what we’d like to see in 2050. We explored the bushland and wrote poetry then we painted canvases to represent our visions. Marli will take these ideas and create a vision 2050 painting for the Town of Victoria Park.

We look forward to bringing all the young people back together to see the finished paintings and celebrate our future visions., sharing our ideas with Council members.

Report written by Niamh, MK Youth Board Member

To find out more about Green Lab check out our website here.

Green Lab, a Millennium Kids Citizen Science program, is funded by the Western Australian Government’s State Natural Resource Management Program. Millennium Kids works in collaboration with Sustainable Schools WA to support schools sustainability goals.

 

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