Henry, Aanya, Yafei, Yousouf, Isabella, Jude and Likhita from the Brentwood Green Team, with the help of Year 12 Environmental Science students, hosted an online workshop on 25 August 2021 for our community titled ‘Climate Action: Target 2030’. This webinar was intended to bring together schools in Victoria and hopefully, across Australia in the future, to discuss actions taken to tackle climate change.

42 participants from 12 different organisations/schools attended this workshop. The consensus of the webinar was positive and very educational for everyone. The teachers and students from Brandon Park Primary School said, "Those students were so passionate, and it was thoroughly engaging and informative!". This was a really great experience for me as a student and gave me the opportunity to enhance my public speaking and presenting skills.

Some of the highlights shared during the webinar included:

- Brentwood emitted 540 tons of Bremissions in 2019. Our greenhouse gas emissions dropped by nearly 23% from 2015 to 2019 due to installation of solar PV, LED upgrade, recycling, tree planting and composting.

- Brentwood is optimistic to achieve a net zero-emissions school by 2030 through the new initiatives that are going to be introduced.

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The Q&A segment towards the end of the workshop provided everyone an opportunity to share the actions they are taking in order to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Please watch the recording of our webinar here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQbV19Uikao

Yousouf Palitanawala

Year 11 student & Green Team vice-captain

On Thursday, 9th September, 5 girls from the Brentwood Green Team (aka Climate Colleens) had the opportunity to present at the 16th Annual Schools Sustainability Festival organised by EcoCentre https://ecocentre.com/schoolsfestival. Throughout the morning, the virtual festival provided us with ideas on how to be more sustainable and the role of schools in shaping a better future.

Our presentation was based on ‘Climate Action: Target 2030’, an extension of one of our most recent projects. We shared with other schools the work we have been doing to mitigate climate change as well as how we are planning to reach the net-zero emissions by 2030. It was a great opportunity because there was a large audience to whom we could pitch our projects to and draw inspiration from.

Aside from the workshop, we have learned individually how important it is for girls to be educated in the area of climate change because they play a major role in solving the issue. Together, we have improved our leadership and communications skills which will enable us to continue on this path to educating one another on the importance of climate action.

Here is a recording of our presentation at the festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL7dVQrWR-Y

The Brentwood Green Team launched SEVEN in 2021 to interact with students from our neighbouring schools and share each other’s sustainability projects. Brentwood hosted the second installment of the online SEVEN meeting on 9 June. Students presented Brentwood’s ‘Towards Zer0 Bremissions’ campaign to the audience and raised awareness on the importance of immediate climate action.

Thank you to Jessie and Annette from the Eastern Alliance for Sustainable Learning (EASL) for facilitating this meeting.