A joint project between The Rotary Clubs of Sunraysia (D9520) and The Murray-Darling Freshwater Research Centre.
The annual Rotary Health of the River Youth Forum is being held again in 2008 bringing it into its tenth year. The forum brings together year 9 and 10 students from Rotary district 9520 which stretches from Robinvale to Victor Harbour, with the intention of learning about the health of our rivers and the ways that River Health impacts their lives. The four day event will be held from Thursday April 10 to Sunday April 13 2008, at the picturesque Lake Cullulleraine, 50km west of Mildura, Victoria.
The forum offers an exciting opportunity for interested students and future leaders to become involved in a weekend of activities that are designed to raise their awareness of the needs of, and ways of maintaining, an ecologically sound river system. The forum examines the importance of the River environment to our communities as well as focusing on the role that young people can play in educating the community and changing attitudes to water.
Students can expect to participate in a range of water based activities that illustrate both the costs and benefits of water resource management. From the environmental side, the students sample fish, bugs, aquatic plants and water quality and, in the process, learn about their biology and the impact of our use of the resource. The students also visit Tandou winery participating in role playing games where the demands of the environment have to be traded off against economic and social issues. The camp isn’t all work however, as there are opportunities for physical activities including canoeing, swimming etc.
The camp culminates in the students giving a presentation on what river health means to them. In previous years both organizers and the participants have been very impressed with the high standard of the presentations which demonstrated a great deal of imagination and understanding of the issues. Perhaps the most pleasing aspect of the presentations in the past has been the desire of the students to find solutions to the many problems that they had learned about over a busy weekend.
Comments from students attending previous forums:
- “I learnt that little things do make a difference”
- “I had an awesome time, I learnt heaps of new things and made lots of new friends”
- “It has given me a larger outlook on how much our lives depend on the Murray river”
- “I especially liked meeting other people from around SA, NSW and Vic”
Images from the 2007 Health of the River Forum can be downloaded as a PDF (186KB).
A camp brochure can be downloaded as a PDF (515KB). Application details (236KB) and a nomination form (32KB) can be dowloaded as WORD documents. For more information, contact
| MDFRC Mildura |
Greg Missen, Assistant Coordinator |
| Phone: (03) 5051 4050 |
Phone: (03) 5051 1822 |
| info@mdfrc.org.au |
|
To improve communication would students email outbackquilting@bigpond.com of their intention of nomination so that the committee can correspond by email with applicants
Health of River Forum Brochure 2008 (515 KB)
Images of 2007 HOR Forum (186 KB)
HOR Nomination Form 2008 (32 KB)
HOR letter to Parents and Students (236 KB)
