In 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 Global Goals (officially known as the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs). It’s now five years on, and we have more work than ever to do. These goals have the power to create a better world by 2030, by ending poverty, fighting inequality and addressing the urgency of climate change. Guided by the goals, it is now up to all of us, governments, businesses, civil society and the general public to work together to build a better future for everyone. My team chose to focus on global goal 14, Life below water. Our way of doing this was far from conventional. MY team decided to partner with friends of bullcreek who kindly donated 250 trees for us to plant along the canning river. These trees are made to better the water quality by creating stabler bank foundations aswell as taking toxins out of the water. My team now worked to create a tree planting day that was a huge success. In all we planted over 250 trees in the span of only 2 hours.
The process of partnering with the friends of Bull Creek gave me many skills such as effective communication as well as time management. Working with an organisation had its pros and cons. Without the resources and experiences of the friends of bull creek our tree planting event would never have the huge success that it was. The things that I had to learn and overcome was definitely meeting deadlines and managing to communicate outside my ‘set time’ to do this project. As this project was based in my Global Goals elective I assumed that I would only have to work on it during class, however I soon realised that if I wanted to make this project to be successful I would have to work outside of class and put in more hours. The drive and need to work on it out of class taught me practical skills about having to time manage and prioritise. This experience was definitely a wake up call when it came to working hours. Although previously reluctant to work outside of the conventional working hours, I now will not hesitate to work outside of them to effectively finish my work to a high standard. My teamwork skills have also drastically improved as well as my mediating skills/dealing with conflict. Working in a group of people that I didn’t know was not easy at first but as we as a team grew together to complete this project we all learned the value of effective communication and division of work.
