January 31, 2021
Creating Sustainability Stories (Master of Outdoor and Sustainability Education)
As an educator, I believe that story is one of the effective media to share about knowledge around us. I can say almost all children like to listen or make their own stories. Storytelling personally brings a lot of happiness, somehow I can feel that I am part of the story even when I read a story to the children.
In the course about Environmental and Sustainability Education in the Natural and Cultural Landscape, we learned many aspects of sustainability and how to deliver the knowledge holistically for the children. One of our tasks is to create our own sustainability story. I remember in the beginning in a small group we introduced to EPOSEA tools (tools to see issues from various aspects designed by our lecture). Then after we understand the tools better, we work individually or with one partner and trying to find what issue that we want to use.
My friend and I choose to take issue with Reclamation Benoa Bay in Bali and focus on mangrove protection. For several weeks we gather all information about the issue from social, economic, policy, agent, culture, and community approach. Our lecture was very supportive to give us freedom for our imagination and help to an active discussion. Sadly because of covid condition, we were not allowed to present the final story online. However, it is still a very good experience to create our own story based on the sustainability issue.
All of my friends really passionate during the process, they came up with inspiring stories. The issues were various start from the forest in the nordic countries, indigenous life in Canada, the fish industry in Ireland, deforestation in Ghana, mink killed in Denmark because of Covid, sustainability food system, refugee, and many more. From this, you can see how diverse our knowledge after hears a lot of stories that contain a very important message related to sustainability.
In the end, I want to show you some of the characters in our story. Our story is designed for preschool up to grade 3 primary school. It is an open-ended story, the final part is developed depending on the children’s imagination.
