About Us

About Global Neighbourhood

The goal of Global Neighbourhood is to protect the one neighbourhood that is shared by all creatures. The environment of the earth links the whole world into one large global neighbourhood. We have not taken adequate care of our neighbourhood, and it will cause us irreparable harm if we don’t change the way that we treat our world. Global Neighbourhood hopes to initiate this change on many levels.

More specifically, our aim is to inform and equip those who are most affected by climate change. This primary group that we will be directly working with is children, who will inherit the damaged world that we adults have left them.

Our Strategy to Empower Adults

This website is an important part of our strategy. It is designed primarily as a tool for voters who wish to make the environment a priority in determining where to place their vote. Through this website, we inform voters of the nature of various environmental issues and produce balanced assessments of the positions of the various political parties in regard to these issues. This website will hopefully add to the pressure on governments to ensure that their policies are beneficial to the environment. We are promoting the website with the use of stickers and possibly other items with the slogan, “I vote for the globe”. We hope that people will purchase these stickers and place them on their car, bike, fridge etc to promote the fact that people are reading the website and using it as a guide to assist them in making their voting decisions. This will place pressure on government and opposition parties to ensure that their environmental policies are designed to protect our environment.

This dual approach is a way of teaching people about the urgency of the environmental issues that we face, and then giving them means to make their concerns heard.

Our Strategy to Empower Children

We inform children by teaching them about global warming. We equip them by giving them avenues through which they can express their concerns about the environment. Our plan is to speak to children at schools about the problem of global warming and about the possible solutions. The presentation is positive and interactive and includes extensive use of experiments, stories, photos, props, games and illustrations.

We believe that children CAN make a difference. Deep down we all know that they are the ones who will be most affected by our careless use of resources, and for that reason we WILL listen to them.

The plan of Global Neighbourhood is not just to teach children what they can do, but to facilitate various ways in which children can make a difference. These methods include:

Encouraging their parents to make lifestyle changes that assist the environment.
Writing to newspapers.
Lobbying the government, business leaders and others in influence for change by writing letter.
Children’s rallies, where children can get together to ask adults to make changes to protect their future, and maybe also to apologise for the mess that we have left them.

A major part of our work is to visit schools and to speak to children about the problem of global warming. We will also go to Sunday schools and scout groups. The presentation includes teaching regarding:

A basic explanation of the earth’s climate
The causes of global warming
The effects of global warming (now and in the future)
What we can do to help.

The presentation is interactive and includes extensive use of experiments, stories, photos, props, games and illustrations.

The presentation may also involve a project where each child writes a letter to various people in power expressing their concerns about the environment (of course if they are not concerned, that is OK. The children can just write what they feel). Hopefully many children will be concerned enough to ask the recipient to do something to take care of the environment and to prevent global warming. We will obviously avoid issues that may be controversial and encourage children to focus on issues that we can all agree on. For instance, children would not be encouraged to ask John Howard to reject nuclear power (unless they strongly feel that way inclined), but may ask for more funds to be allocated for renewable energy. The younger children will also draw a picture of subjects such as ‘What will the world will be like in 100 years’.

The classroom may like to have a class discussion and work out one issue that they feel very strongly about. It may be that they want businesses to spend more money on alternative energy, the government to give subsidies to organic farmers or for their local council to put recycling bins in all the parks. Then the letter/letters would all fit in with the same theme.

These letters may go to various people or organisations (depending on the content of the letters and the decision of the class), including:

The government (this may be a local member, the minister for the environment, the prime minister or the opposition). Please note that Global Neighbourhood is not a politically inclined at all. We believe in advocacy and do not care which party wins the next election. All we are concerned about is that children have a voice and are heard by whoever has the power to affect their future.
Agricultural bodies – asking them to change practices and stop using poisons.
Businesses, especially those that have an impact in the local environment – for instance, children in Altona may write to Mobil asking them to reduce emissions from the refinery and children may write to local mining companies about their environmental impact.

This aspect of the presentation will assist schools in their application of the new ‘Civics and Citizenship’ education which has recently been introduced to the Victorian schools’ curriculum. Letter-writing is a very important aspect of this course and we will help teach children how to do this. This will give them a very practical application of their studies.

Global Neighbourhood will also assist schools that wish to follow up the visit with other studies on global warming and sustainability and with any other projects that assist the children to raise their voice.

Our website will be an important component of our work. This is where the most innovative and interesting letters and pictures produced by children will be available for anyone to view. It will also be a reference point for children keen to know more about how they can take care of the environment.

If you want to know more about Global Neighbourhood, check out our FAQ page. If your question isn’t answered there, feel free to contact us.

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