WEN Team Report

Young people demand change.
They wonder how anyone can claim to be building a better future, without thinking of the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the excluded. Laudato Si’ n13 

On the 20th March, Lee, Adelaide, Florence and Ally, from Year 5 attended the Primary Student WEN  Day at St Paul’s Albion Park.

The Wollongong Environment Network (WEN) is an initiative of the Catholic Education Office that aims to support school communities to respond to  Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ and implement environmental stewardship and sustainability in their schools.

Caring for Our Common Home

In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis has addressed all people throughout the world to care for our common home, calling us all to “cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation” and to have an ecological conversion.

Day’s Events

The day started with the gathering of over 120 Years 5 or 6 students from across the Wollongong Diocese. We had made our name tags for the day from recycled materials. We shared a prayer and a very special Acknowledgement of Country. 

We listened to the words of Pope Francis in his letter, Laudato Si, where he reminds us that all of Creation is a gift from God. Pope Francis’ message to us is, “We are taking more than our fair share of resources and we must look after each other and care for our Common Home.”

Keynote Presentation – Pip Kiernan  Clean Up Australia 

Pip’s father, Ian Kiernan, was circumnavigating the world, he became sad and angry when he saw how polluted the ocean was with plastic waste. In 1989, when he returned to Australia, he rallied his friends to clean up Sydney Harbour with him. He was amazed when 40,000 people turned up to help! The next year he started a Foundation called Clean up Australia and today over 1,000,000 people participate every year Australia wide.

Pip’s main message to us was, the success of Clean Up Australia shows that we as individuals CAN make a difference.

We also heard from Greta Thunberg, who at the age of 15 became an Environmental Activist. Her message to us was,

Remember, you are never too small to make a difference.

Our school was invited to present some of our work supporting Laudato Si. We wrote and prepared a slide show of all the Environmental Initiatives at our school, including Gardening Club, equipment for Gardening Club, worm farms and FOGO, reducing Canteen waste,  co-mingled recycling, nude lunches, Environmental Class of the Week trophy and Raffles for Earth.

ECO ACTIVITIES

We made a bag using our old t-shirts by only cutting and tying, no sewing. This was a lot of fun and  a good idea for a class to do   .

This was one of the 5 R’s. The 5 r’s are: REFUSE, REDUCE, REUSE, REPURPOSE, RECYCLE!

We wrote an environmental prayer together and this is displayed at the end of our Report. In the afternoon we discussed the Good Green Stories shared by the 4 other presenting schools. We were inspired by their stories and we are now even more motivated to do more GREEN initiatives at Holy Cross. 

We decided on the following initiatives that we could introduce at Holy Cross:

1. THE BRING IT BACK PROGRAM, where we collect used school supplies, like textas and pens, and an adult takes them to OFFICE WORKS for recycling.
2. SIGNAGE for our Garden beds made with the 3D printer, eg. Sight and Touch, Touch, Taste, Smell.

In the Commissioning Ritual, we were presented with our WEN badges and we made a pledge to work as Environmental Ambassadors at our school. We also wrote  this  prayer that we will pray at any  Environment  days or events at school.