State Heritage Convention

Environmental Heritage to me is simple. There are three major ingredients, Conservation, Education and Responsibility. The first main ingredient is Conservation. As a 12 year old attending the first International Children's Conference on the Environment, I heard presentations by children from all different parts of the earth. I saw photos and heard stories of the beauty our natural habitat and I also saw the destruction. This was the first time the word "conservation" meant anything to me. At the conference, there was an atmosphere of urgency about the situations we heard of. Disturbing facts even about your own country.

This word "conservation" not only was limited to our natural environment, but stretched to the native species that inhabit our earth.

My second ingredient would have to be Education. The power of Environmental Education has not been extended to what it could be, in my eyes. It has the power to shape a generation and accordingly shape our world.

The strong message from the environmental conferences I have organized is that there has been no uniformity of Environmental Education across schools and has been left as an extra curricula activity. With the state of our environment and the amount of new technology, the subject of the environmental education really is a life long subject. Simply teaching compassion for our heritage, our animals and for our natural environment is a necessity in modern-day education.

The third ingredient is Responsibility.

"It is easy to make a buck, it's a lot tougher making a difference".
The Community unit could be one of the most influential parts of society if working together. This is about adults, children, teachers, pastors, teenagers and families combining energies to strive for appreciation and recognition of our heritage in their communities. It's a much used saying, but very true, "Think Globally, Act Locally". Communities must demand that environmental heritage is not comprised.

The common myth is that you can only help your environment by becoming an environmental scientist. Many people ask why I didn't take up environmental science at university, but it just re-enforces the fact, that environmental scientists are not the only ones and should not be the only ones in our community that can contribute to the conserving of our environmental heritage.

Many young people come to me and say "yeah, but I 'm only one person, what am I going to change". Sometimes we can all get bogged down in enormity of issues that need attention. It's important to instill the belief that one person can make a difference, because you can! A journalist came up to Mother Teresa and said that he wasn't impressed with what she was doing. She, of course, asked the man why so? He replied that what she was doing was simply a drop in the ocean. Mother Teresa looked at the man and smiled, she responded the whole ocean is only made up of drops.

Although only 18 years of age, I have had a life that has been very much involved with environmental issues. It is truly a story that illustrates that small acorns can and do turn into huge oak trees. My environmental endeavors started at the age of 11 years old, when I was involved in an environmental club that was run at my school. AT that stage, volunteer mothers ran the club. The next year, I was elected student president. I had a great time organizing the environmental activities. We even had Ken Colbung come and speak with us and show us around the bush land close to the school, all those years ago. In the same year, I put in an application describing the activities of the environment club and was lucky enough to be chosen to represent Australia at the first International Children's Conference for the environment in Eastbourne, England. For 3 days, 800 children for 90 different countries came and shared their environmental stories. This conference really ignited the passion that I still hold on to today. All together, there were 17 delegates from Australia, 4 including myself from Western Australia. When we got back from England, the 4 of us got together and decided we wanted to keep the momentum up from England. Though we quickly discovered that there was no outlet for our excitement. That was when we decided to hold a conference of our own. Can you imagine it, 4 twelve years olds sitting around a table with our mothers deciding to hold a conference. Unimaginable at times, but very real. We all held the magic ingredients to lift this project off the ground, no it wasn't excellent organizational skills, lots of money or knowing the right people, it was simply passion, energy and the belief that anything was possible.

We named the conference "Kids Helping Kids" as the aim of the conference was to help young people in Western Australia acquire ideas and information to start environmental projects where they lived. The conference was a complete success and I'm proud to say that, this conference has run annually from 1996.

In 1999, I was selected to be on the first National Youth Roundtable in Canberra. This comprised of 50 students from around Australia varying in ages and backgrounds. The Roundtable was set up to advise the government on issues young people deemed important. There were six topic groups created, one including the environment. For my research project, in association with CSIRO and my school Swan Christian College, I ran a one-day conference called "Reclaiming the Future". The aim of this conference was to firstly inform Young Western Australians on the environmental issues that affect us in Western Australia and secondly for the conference to act as an advisory body to the government on the concerns and ideas raised at the conference. "Reclaiming the Future" is now it's third year and is known as an excellent conference, where highschoolers and teachers can receive cutting edge environmental information, converse with national speakers and have their views heard.

In my travels, I have met many passionate young people who study or work very hard in their chosen area within the environment. However, when I speak with groups or turn on the television. "Young people with dreadlocks", "ferals" or "tree-hugging hippies" receive the most attention when covering young people following their passion for the conservation of the environment, it is not a correct representation. What the media does not cover is the young people that came to the Minister for the Environment's office every month to learn about the environmental issues and write a report including young people's concerns and recommendations through the Youth Environment Council. How is our media portraying it's young people and is it fair? But it can not be just a case of blaming the media, we must together break down stereotypes ourselves. How do we go about this?

Lastly, I would like to share with you something that I think is very important. It's about creating young leaders in environmental issues such as heritage. It's important to recognize that youth are not only the future, but are part of the community today as well. I very simply describe a leader as a person who has the capacity to turn visions into reality. Would you agree that leaders do not happen over night? That it takes time for leaders to be molded through learning experiences, reading, conversing with people and a deep passion to form. If so, why can't tomorrow's leaders be found today… well they can… they are just in disguise,… they are our Young People. Did you know that there is a future prime minister of Australia that is a young person right at the moment? We are the YOUNG LEADERS of the world.

Young People have young, fresh minds, full of enthusiasm and confidence. As Oscar Wilde once said, "The old believe everything, the middle aged suspect everything and the young people know everything". Well, at least we'd like to believe so! But even though we don't know everything, we, ourselves still have the ability to inspire, motivate, encourage, lead and of course provide boundless energy. Even Albert Einstein said, "Knowledge is limited, but imagination encircles the world. "

Don't underestimate the power of young people NOW.