Volunteering in Australia: Investing in a Cleaner Earth
by Caitlin Epstein
As LIU Global students, we are given many opportunities to volunteer while abroad and truly invest our time and efforts into the communities that we get to be a part of. In Costa Rica, students were able to help clean up a river in the Central Valley and facilitate turtle hatching in the province of Guanacaste. In Spain, students worked to teach refugees English and rehabilitate greyhounds. In China, they were able to promote local green initiatives, and now students are able to work towards that same goal in Australia.
Global Juniors were only in Australia for about six weeks during the Spring semester, but in that short amount of time between classes and homework, they participated in beach cleanups and helped to plant over 320 trees.
On one of their first weekends in the country, a few students worked to clean up Byron Bay’s Main Beach through a cleanup organized by taking Three for the Sea. This Australian organization encourages beachgoers to pick up at least three pieces of trash every time they go to the beach. Take Three for the Sea pushes this initiative on social media, and encourages participants to post photos of their three pieces of waste to raise further awareness of the cause. The organization is based out of Sydney, but they organize beach cleanups like the one students helped out within Byron Bay all over the country. Over the two-hour-long beach cleanup, we helped to collect a few hundred pounds of trash and keep that waste out of our oceans and ecosystems.
While living in a beach town like Byron Bay, it is easy to focus on beautifying the beaches, but Global students have also worked hard to help with bush restoration. The restoration of Australia’s bush is crucial after years of colonization and bush clearing, as well as the recent wildfires that ravaged the country. In the Fall in Australia, students drilled through the hard, drought-dried land to plant about 50 trees. Now, after a lot of much-needed rain that has softened the earth, students were able to plant over 320 trees in just three hours under the coordination of local bush restoration specialist Dave Rawlins. Tree planting is a lot of work, from clearing the grass with a bush cutter to digging the hole to tucking the tree sapling into the ground with plenty of water and soil. Fortunately, working together as a team can make tree planting fly by, and before you know it, there are hundreds of more trees in the ground!
Another huge part of the LIU Global experience is international internships that focus largely on creating positive social change. This semester, visiting student Jacqueline Duncan from LIU Post interned with Renew Fest, a local festival that is zero waste. The festival provides a model for other major festivals to reduce the waste they produce, and Jacqueline is working with the festival to compile zero waste guidelines for festivals across Australia and around the world. Jacqueline is interested in sustainable development and was able to foster that interest through the time she has spent working with Renew Fest.
Volunteering time and efforts abroad gives people the opportunity not just to have a positive impact on that community, but also the opportunity to connect with incredible individuals and organizations. I have cherished the time I have spent working to make my homes across the world better and more beautiful places, and will surely take my love of volunteering at home and abroad with me throughout the rest of my time with Global and long after graduation.
