Meeting of the young minds

After a bit of tooing and frowing over the past few weeks Mara and the rest of the Green Cross Australia superstars had organised a super duper video conference with several high schools across multiple countries last week.

 

What started out as an experiment in inter-continental video conferencing with the aid of Polycom ended up being a great discussion with many high school students from several schools talking about extreme weather, climate change and the need for more volunteers.

 

With the help of Emergency Management Australia (EMA), Polycom and Questacon in Canberra, we were able to get several schools within Australia including Knox Grammar (Sydney), Abbotsleigh (Sydney), Hutchins (Hobart), students from local Canberra schools and also a few from a high school in Texas. Of the Extreme Weather Heroes there was Ayla in Brisbane and myself at Knox Grammar. There were also volunteers from the ACT SES and other charities.

 

The aim of this discussion was to introduce the younger generation into world wide video conferencing and discuss the issues of extreme weather, climate change and the need for more volunteers. Whilst many school students would already be familiar with video conferencing, eg Skype, to be done on such large scale was truly a first for some.

 

Many students were aware of the increasing extreme weather, especially the students from Texas who are at the forefront of hurricanes every year. The local Canberra students were very aware of the 2003 bushfires which had such a great impact on the city. Coupled with the Black Saturday fires in Melbourne we were all made aware of extreme weather and the need for more volunteers. With an aging volunteer population it was clear for everyone to see the need for younger blood.

 

Each of the volunteers described their experiences within Emergency Services volunteering during the day-to-day training and also operationally. What was clear was the varied work we do, the range of skills we learn and the friends we make along the way.

 

What I hoped the students learnt out of the experience was the need, and indeed the attraction of volunteering within Emergency Services to not only give back to the community but also make some great friends along the way.

 

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