Sustainability
Ideas to Help You Take Action on Sustainability
To support our Sustainability Strategy and Action Plan, we’ve compiled a few ideas that will help you change the way we look at sustainability.
As we continue to deliver great outcomes through our Scouts Australia’s Sustainability Strategy & Action Plan, we encourage you to join the Scouts for SDGs movement and take action. Through the many grants and opportunities available from governments and organisations, you can be supported to turn your sustainability idea into reality.
We have now completed our first full year of the Sustainability Strategy & Action Plan, with initiatives being delivered at National, Branch and Group level. It has been great to see our members embracing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and we are now sharing some more information to build awareness and support you to take action.
Through April we refreshed our Sustainability pages, including our #Scouts4SDGs page – which now connects you to 17 new pages that cover each of the SDGs. Check them out to learn more about each goal, see how Scouting is already tackling this, and pick up some tips to take action.
Sometimes big ideas need big support – a community of people to help you, promotions to share the initiative, and/or some dollars to make it happen. Here are a few suggestions:
- We are lucky to have access to some great grant programs to help make sustainability improvements to our facilities. The Federal Government offer the Energy Efficient Communities Program (Community Energy Efficiency and Solar Grants) to provide community groups with grants up to $12,500 for energy efficient equipment, energy generation and storage systems, and energy audits. Visit the Program website for more information and to see if you are eligible.
- Are you a young person (16 – 22) living in a regional or rural area and want help make a difference? Join ABC’s annual Heywire competition. It kicks off with a storytelling competition, encouraging young people to tell stories about their life outside the major cities. Every ABC regional station then selects a winning Heywire entry to represent their part of Australia – the winners will work with ABC staff to produce their story (to be featured on ABC Radio and online), and they also score an all-expenses-paid trip to the week-long Heywire Summit (designed to ensure their voices are heard in Canberra and around the nation). Check out the Heywire website to apply for the next round, or to apply for a grant if you want to make one of the Heywire ideas from this year a reality.
Next year we will be launching a new way that you can tackle the SDGs in your Unit or project patrol (youth and adults too) – the SDG Challenge. This could be a great way to draw on your ideas and help take action for the SDGs in Scouting. We will share more information throughout this year as it develops; please get in contact with us if you are interested in helping trial/develop the SDG Challenge.
We are always keen to hear about what you have been doing as part of #Scouts4SDGs – if you have a story to share, or would like to bring your experience to help us deliver on our Sustainability Strategy & Action Plan, please email the National Sustainability Team at sustainability@scouts.com.au.
