Inspiration, Action, Innovation, Connection
We deliver a wide range of sustainability oriented courses from short taster workshops to longer and accredited training. This includes hands on education in energy efficiency, food growing, composting, backyard chooks, tours of sustainable communities and houses, bamboo design and construction, chemical free bush regeneration, bio char, energy efficient house design for the subtropics, and many other topics. All teachers, trainers and facilitators are passionate and highly committed sustainability practitioners themselves.
Last term I attended Sharon Gibson’s “Urban Farming” course with Byron College. I was contemplating semi-retirement, and wanted to start growing my own fruit & vegies. What I needed was some expert advice & information about how to prepare soil, the type of garden and many more useful tips & tricks. Sharon met all my expectations & more. She held the course in her own backyard, surrounded by her amazing productive garden. Her knowledge about organic gardening, making your own liquid fertilizers from weeds, the importance of not spraying & allowing beneficial insects to work for you was so motivating, enjoyable and totally fascinating. The best part was being able to start a garden without all the hard work of digging. The no-dig and straw bale gardens are almost instantaneous & improve any type of poor soil when natural fertilizers are regularly applied. Thanks to Sharon, I am now reaping the rewards from my own beautiful veggie garden – all organic, you can’t eat fresher than that! – Sarndra Steel
We have a range of accredited training. our permaculture program is attracting students from the wider region and interstate. Students are undertaking practical projects in backyards, community gardens, schools, farms and other community initiatives.
We also run accredited training in integrating sustainability into VET training, (TAESUS501A) and a range of industry specific skill sets such as waste management for builders (CPCCBC402A), energy efficient deign for designers and builders (CPCCSV5013A), sustainable horticulture units and others as demand and funding becomes available. If you or your business is interested in training to improve your business or industry sustainability practice please get in touch to discuss your needs.
Get Growing..Enjoy Eating Local Food project 2011
To promote local sustainable food growing we ran 40 workshops and demonstrations at public events around the region from Grafton to Tweed Heads and inland to Bonalbo. Over 500 people have participated in these events. The workshops (mostly one day long) were on topics such as Getting going with organic growing , Food growing for renters, Compost making, Introduction to permaculture, Farm to Fork, Using and preserving seasonal gluts and other topics. Some of the courses were held in partnership with other community colleges in the region and with community gardens. It involved a team of 13 passionate tutors. Composting demonstrations were held at markets and field days. This was part of the Northern Rivers Foodlinks Project – a collaborative project between 7 local governments in the region with funding from the NSW Environment Trust Fund. We were contracted to provide the community training component. More information about the project can be found on www.northernriversfoodlinks.com.au and www.sustainfood.com.au.
We run webinars for adult educators throughout the country called “Greening up your centre” a series of 4 sessions can be found on the Adult Learning Australia Web site. These were run for ALA with federal DEEWR funding.
https://ala.asn.au/events/sustainability-webinar-1-greening-up-your-centre/
https://ala.asn.au/events/sustainability-webinar-2-greening-your-operations-and-infrastructure
We have also been part of an NSW intercollegiate project team that developed the sustainable college kit hosted on the Community Colleges Australia website (for CCA members)
All this has had a catalytic effect on sustainability education in the Region and inspired other organisations around Australia to green up their centres.
In 2010 we developed and piloted a professional development resource for trainers called “Sustainability and Energy Efficiency in Retail Training” which is publically available this resource is very relevant to other training packages.
In 2009 we were funded as part of the NSW Governments Green skills initiative to research incorporating Sustainability within the Retail and Horticulture training packages. The research report was called “Green Thumbs and Green Goods”
In 2009 the College undertook a project for the NSW Department of Health to produce a BACKYARD GARDENING teacher’s resource kit. This guide and CDrom ‘Eden at Home –Growing Backyard Food’ is available.
Our Buildings
The innovative passive solar design of our retrofitted main campus buildings saves energy and water and is a very pleasant learning space. We have solar hot water and a 30kw grid interactive photovoltaic system, Cardiff air ventilation system, herb tea and fruit garden. We also use outdoor teaching spaces including inspiring sustainable houses and gardens some of which are on intentional communities. A number of our courses are run in partnership with the Mullumbimby Community Garden and our students undertake development projects at the garden.
There is a compelling case to respond to the environmental crisis and climate change globally.
How we have responded locally is to improve eco literacy in the community so people can actively participate and be empowered for grass roots effective action. The greatest need and our response is to give adults real practical skills and ongoing motivation to lower carbon footprint and also to improve local food security through up skilling people in local organic food growing. We work on the model that change needs to come about from grassroots movements and our team-based participatory education based on the Principles of Education for Sustainability is vital to this.
We are members of a regional collaboration to coordinate action on climate change and building community resilience initiatives see Sustain Northern Rivers (http://www.sustainnorthernrivers.org/) and work closely with our local government (Byron Shire Council) sustainability programs (www.byron.nsw.gov.au/sustainability) Their fact sheets on sustainable living can be collected from our office or click here (http://www.byron.nsw.gov.au/sustainability
To subscribe to the Sustainability @Byron newsletter click here (http://www.byron.nsw.gov.au/sustainability-newsletter for updates on community events.
Building Sustainability
In 2010 Byron Region Community College opened the rejuvenated Mullumbimby Campus, a celebration of the successful completion of a Building Sustainability Project. The project sought to implement sustainable practices in not only the construction of the campus but also in the way the building encourages sound sustainable working, learning and living in all who use the facilities.
Community Recognition
Sustainability Officer, Katrina Shields received a ‘2009 World Environment Day Community Recognition Award’ for contribution to environmental education. Received on the day by Katrina and Richard Vinycomb (Director of Byron College) at the Byron Shire Council presentation ceremony.
