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History
The Sustainable Living Challenge was first established in 1998 as a pilot program with 10 schools in NSW. In 2000 it went national and is now fully run by Faculty of the Built Environment in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme.
In 1998, under the strong leadership of a few individuals in the Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of New South Wales (in particular Professor Deo Prasad), an innovative schools program was created called the Sustainable Living Competition. It was developed to meet two key needs:
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to create a national awards framework that recognises the outstanding work being led by motivated and passionate teachers as champions of education for sustainability in secondary schools all over Australia
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to link those active and engaged teachers together via a virtual community of practice to foster exchange, collaboration and support.
In 2000, after a successful pilot in association with the NSW Department of Education and Training, the program went national. The program was particularly valuable to the design and technology key learning area as it championed the unique role that young people can play when creating innovative solutions that foster sustainable living.
In 2003, after five years in the landscape, a thorough review was conducted of the Sustainable Living Competition. At the same time, state sustainable schools pilots were being conducted which provided an opportunity to rethink the program and to consider how to best align it with the growing momentum around sustainable schools across Australia. There was also a renewed emphasis on youth capacity building by the United Nations Environment Programme (the TUNZA strategy).
In 2004, the Faculty of the Built Environment became the sole funding partner of the program. This move demonstrated the commitment of the Faculty to genuine and meaningful work in the community, whilst allowing the program to pursue deep outcomes in terms of teaching and learning.
In 2005, the program was re-launched in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme as the Sustainable Living Challenge. The key differentiating factor of the program from its previous incarnation was its change in focus away from end products or outputs as a main goal to a program that more adequately recognises the central role of the learning journey itself on the path to sustainability.
In 2006, the Sustainable Living Challenge took the first step
towards realising its long term goal of building a network of
University partners committed to work with schools to help them tackle
the challenges and opportunities of sustainability. In May, Griffith
University launched the Queensland state node as the first step of many
in this direction.
Today, the Sustainable Living Challenge is a peak program of the United
Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) in
Australia. Since its beginning, it has engaged over 13,000 students and over 2000 teachers. In 2007, some dynamic changes were made to the program facilitate closer integration with national frameworks, specifically the Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative (AuSSI). These changes include profiling leading practice sustainability education, supporting new Sustainable Living Champions, introducing a new online submisison process and the Teach Sustainability Award.
