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Moe (South St) Primary School

SOUTH ST MOE, VIC

Phone: 5127 1512

Website: www.edumail.vic.gov.au

Contact Person:

fildes.lawrie.g@edumail.vic.gov.au

In 2009 South Street undertook to gain 5 star accreditation as a Sustainable school through ResourceSmart Sustainability Victoria. We believe that it is important for children to have a strong understanding of their environment and to be able to take action at a local and global level to reduce their ecological footprint. We have endeavoured to practice Waste Wise initiatives, promote energy efficiency, reduce water usage, increase biodiversity in the school gardens and encourage community practice in sustainability.

South Street PS already had and strong association with Environmental Sustainability and its main building was specifically designed to use less water and draw less on fossil fuels. It has waterless urinals, captured rain water from tanks is used to flush other toilet pans. It has night purging to reduce the use of electricity for cooling and its open means that lights are often not required during the day.

Prior to this we had been developing a “Plant & Animal” Program. This amazing program began when one of our parents (Joseph) offered to bring over some of his choose and rabbits for the children to look at. This grew into a regular event and we now have a permanent chook pen which cages chooks and rabbits. The children play an active part in feeding and caring for them and eggs collected are sold to our local community.
This goes back into buying supplementary food for the animals. At this time Joseph also began a small garden in which children began planting a variety of vegetables.

This program grew and grew and is now an integral part of the South Street approach.

Our interest in this area expanded when Eric Bottomleycame to our school and presented a full day workshop with all staff. Since that day we develop a number of new activities and completed a variety of tasks which will eventually lead us to becoming fully accredited.

We ensured that our students were also involved in leading this change and created a small action group of “Eco warriors”, whose role it was to lead awareness of sustainability issues and complete several monitor tasks related to Sustainability. These children met regularly and created their action plans with the help of a class teacher.

Community action:
We have attempted to take our parents on our journey with is and often included items in the school newsletter. At the beginning of the year we asked all parents to complete a “sustainability” survey which will be again sent out this year to see what impact our activities at school have had in the home.

Where possible we also advertise our achievements and successes in the local media.

A number of classes joined in International Earth Day activities as well.

Our interest in this area has been noticed by the community at large and we are often approached either by other schools or community bodies who wish to see what we’ve done and how we’ve done it. For examples in June last year we were approached by Joan McColl to launch a wiki that she had just established. Joan is a Sustainability Officer employed by Sustainable Impact with a general brief to promote sustainability. The wiki can be found at: http://sustainablegippslandschools.wikispaces.com/

This then led to the development of a new action group; Gippsland Education for Sustainability Network which is priming itself to be a voice in education for sustainability in Gippsland. Our school was invited and attended as one of the inaugural members.

In 2009 we were also recognised the Schools that Shine run by the Department. This entitled us to a visit from the local radio station 3GG radio program. During the course of the program the interviewed 2 of our Eco-Warriors who had compiled and read a report on sustainability at our school.

In order to achieve some of the programs that we have in place applied for several grants and competitions. Some that we were successful in were:

Neighbourhood Renewal: ($1500) This enabled us to purchase fencing around our chook shed and plant boxes.

Land Care; ($1000) – This enabled us to buy an 800L water tank to water our plants and animals.

Go For Your Life Healthy Start in Schools; ($6000) this will enable us to
– Construct 4 above-ground garden beds;
– Erect shade sails over the Worm farm; Construct a hot house to propagate seedlings for the garden
– Purchase; Potting tables, potting mix, tools, animal food, etc

Our intern Deb McKimmie compiled an excellent CD which has also been entered into the ‘Sustainable Schools Audio Visual Case Study Competition’ as part of The Golden Greenie Awards.

ResourceSmart AuSSI Vic 5star status:
1Star
Type of school/organisation: Primary

This is a private group. To join you must be a registered site member and request group membership.