SPCC Students propose innovative solutions to ensure global food security

Year 10 students gathered last week for the 2nd Young Leaders Symposium on Food Security to discuss ideas and solutions to tackle global food security risks.

After the success of the 2018 Symposium, and in the lead up to Lake Macquarie City Council’s Living Smart Festival this coming weekend, our passionate Year 10 geography students have worked on this project throughout the whole of Term 3, culminating in a Symposium to explore each other’s ideas. The Symposium was also a good opportunity to inform the broader School Community and local community about ways we at a local level can help ensure global food security into the future.

HSIE Coordinator Mr Matt Schultz, alongside Mr Robert Stuart as the 10 Humanities Team Leader, who organised the event, expressed their delight at the level of engagement among the students who took part in the project and symposium

‘It is a such a wonderful and positive experience for the students,’ Mr Schultz explained, ‘our students are passionate about protecting the world that they will inherit, and this project helps them to understand ways that they can be part of the solution for climate change and securing our food sources into the future.’

The Symposium hopes to inspire global change that begins with each local household. In particular, by making students aware of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and what they can do to locally to help the world achieve these goals by 2030. Mr Schultz remarked: “As the old adage declares: think globally and act locally!”

Year 10 were presented with the driving question ‘What is the cost of our food?’ and were charged with the responsibility of researching an area of food production and the impact that this production has the environment. Using that knowledge students were then encouraged to present innovative ideas and solutions around improving sustainable practices for food production into the future.

Attending the event was Cr Kay Fraser, Mayor of Lake Macquarie, alongside other environmental experts from local environmental groups and charities. Specifically, our visiting experts included:

Sam Doove: Warners Bay Sustainable Neighbourhood Group

David Sivyer:Urban Farmer, Feedback Organic Recovery

Mary Riley:Ozharvest

The team moved around each of the students’ exhibits to hear their ideas around how they could bring sustainable initiatives into our societies in order to make valuable changes for the future.

Cr Fraser officially opened the symposium encouraging the students that they are ‘the leaders of our next generation’, and praised them for the time and effort they had put into their presentations.