Emerging as a leader on climate change issues
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AN ALUMNA who is passionately leading a battle against climate change is one of two Australians to win a British Council award for young environmental leaders. Ellen Sandell (BA(2008)BSc(2008)) recently received the Emerging Leaders Award for her efforts to educate and inspire Victorian high school students to take action against climate change.
Last year, as Environment Officer for the University of Melbourne Student Union, Ms Sandell launched an ongoing program called the State-wide Leadership in Environmental Action Program (LEAP). Under the program, 30 high school students are selected to attend a four-day environmental leadership course run by ten volunteers, where they are exposed to environmental professionals from various fields, including law, education, conservation, the solar panel industry and more. Ms Sandell said many of the students had introduced new environmental initiatives into their own schools since attending the course.
“We had three students from Healesville who got their school to switch to recycled paper,” she said.
“It’s empowering to see young people taking action and that there is real passion there. It gives me a lot of hope.”
Ms Sandell created LEAP because she noticed that, unlike most universities, Victorian high schools did not have strong and active environmental groups.
“I noticed there was a lot of passion among high school students for climate change issues, but they didn’t have an outlet for it.”
Ms Sandell recently received her Emerging Leaders Award in Indonesia, where she took part in a leadership course with other winners.
By Fiona Willan
