What I do changes the world – Step by step.
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Submitted by Wild Mountains
Lizz Hills is going on a walk, a long walk across all of Australia. Why?
To understand the stories of our diverse communities.
To give a voice to the changing environment of rural and remote Australia.
To create a forum for individuals and communities to reflect on and take action for the earth.
Starting January 28, Lizz, the Program Director at Wild Mountains environmental education center is starting the Trek2Reconnect, a journey into the hearts and minds of the Australian people.
The Trek2Reconnect will pass through rainforest, desert, urban and coastal landscapes. It will pass through 5,800km, meandering through 32 towns and 24 Aboriginal Nations, ending at the bottom of Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia in July 2023.
“Our earth faces many human made challenges from loss of biodiversity to a changing climate. However, these problems do not appear regularly in our day to day lives and rarely do we sit as communities to discuss how these problems affect our local spaces. Or talk about what actions we need to do together to create a vibrant and positive future in an uncertain world,” says Lizz.
The Trek2Reconnect aims to raise awareness of the challenges we face and create conversation around our changing environment, as well as our place in the solutions.
“A part of the solution includes the need to reconnect people with the natural world and to understand its life support systems. That’s why we want to visit 20 schools and run small immersive educational programs based on Wild Mountains programs of Earthkeepers and Shapers of Tomorrow,” she says.
Congruently, Wild Mountains will offer immersive online programs for the Australian community to connect with the journey, each other and their own natural worlds. This seeks to engender community capacity building, peer to peer learning and focused engagement to inspire attitudinal and behaviour change both personally and locally for our natural world.
Additionally, the journey will seek to connect respectfully with Indigenous Elders and a number of key community groups through the creation of interviews reflecting on our natural world. These interviews will be woven into a short film alongside the journey of the Trek2Reconnect. The film will focus on discovering the reflections from people who live on the land in rural and regional Australia, what they think about the way the environment is changing and their thoughts on solutions for a positive future.
For more information, visit www.wildmountains.org or follow the journey on Instagram and Facebook.
