Author: Jim Crosthwaite

  • Eco-Therapy: Healing for Climate Action Workshop

    Eco-Therapy: Healing for Climate Action Workshop

    When: Sunday 23 February 2025, 1-3pm AEDT

    Kanchana Weerakoon, an environmental conservationist and eco-therapy practitioner, will host a transformative two-part webinar to explore the healing potential of nature and its role in inspiring climate-conscious actions.

    Part 1: Kanchana will introduce the concept of eco-therapy, explaining how reconnecting with nature helps address challenges like eco-anxiety, climate grief, and burnout. By fostering a sense of interconnectedness with the natural world, eco-therapy can inspire a deeper sense of stewardship. Participants will learn how feeling โ€œat oneโ€ with nature can drive small but impactful climate-friendly practices, such as reducing waste, recycling, and sustainable living.

    Part 2: The session will include a live video demonstration of eco-therapy in action. Kanchana will guide attendees on a peaceful virtual walk through her Metta Garden in Sri Lanka. This biodiverse and sustainable space serves as a model for how therapeutic gardens can support mental health and nurture a connection with the environment. Kanchana will share practical advice on creating similar spaces at home, cultivating mindfulness, and embedding sustainability into daily life.

    The workshop is free; however, we encourage you to donate if you learned something. All donations go towards supporting youth-led climate projects in the Asia-Pacific, at the forefront of climate change. Please consider donating!

    Donate to JCJ here

  • Conscious Consumerism & Sustainable Living Workshop

    Workshop recording, Sunday, 25 February

    Event Partner of the National Sustainable Living Festival 2024.

    When: Sunday, 25 February 1-3pm AEDT

    What you will need:

    1. A 600ml plastic bottle,
    2. About 30 items that used to be taken by Red Cycle, including a mix of clean and dry soft plastics such as chip packets, cheese wrapping, coffee packs, and a few thin bags,
    3. A wooden spoon with a long round handle for stuffing the bottles.

    This is a beginner-friendly workshop, suitable for anyone interested in learning more about sustainable living and reducing waste in their daily lives.

    Kanchanaโ€™s approach is informed by the 10Rs of sustainable living – Reject, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Replace, Recycle, Rethink, Remember, Repeat. This approach has allowed her to live a zero-waste lifestyle for the last 23 years in her home and business in Sri Lanka and New Delhi, India. Kanchana will share some easy, low-cost ways that participants can elevate their sustainability journeys.

    In the second part of the workshop, Kanchana will take participants through a hands-on workshop on making eco-bricks. Eco-bricks are the only way to recycle soft plastics in Australia and take them out of circulation. The participants will learn how to convert their non-biodegradables into sustainable building blocks by compacting plastic bottles with their non-biodegradable waste. 

    The workshop is free; however, we encourage participants to donate if they learned something. All donations go towards supporting youth-led climate projects in the Asia-Pacific, at the forefront of climate change. Please consider donating here.

  • 2020 Jaffna on Pedal

    Nava, an ECO-V 2018 Yathra trainee, started running a weekend cycling project to get young people involved in nature in the highly biodiverse Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lankaโ€™s north. Navaโ€™s dream is to make Jaffna a cycling destination by 2030. We were happy to support this initiative by providing some initial money to purchase food for the attendees.

  • Portraits of Change Climate Action Competition

    In conjunction with Michael Chew’s ‘Portraits of Change’ exhibition, JCJ will be holding a environmental ideas and photo competition with the theme: ‘Acting on Climate – what can you do with $100?’

    The competition expands upon the global stories of environmental action in Michael Chewโ€™s โ€˜Portraits of Change Exhibitionโ€™ to inspire people to take local action on climate change and environmental issues in their own lives and communities.

    The competition’s purpose is to inspire people to translate the exhibition theme – motivational local action in the face of both devastating impacts and living with basic needs – into Australian life. The constraint of $100 invites participants to think outside the box and reinforces the idea that actions can be easy and accessible.

    Both JCJ and Michael Chew will be assessing the competition and there will be prizes for 1st to 3rd place.

    Below is the link to the competition, which will be open from 8pm 26th of February until 10pm 18th of March (3 weeks).

    Enter competition here

  • Sustainable Living Festival exhibition from Michael Chew

    Michael’s culmination of years of research will be shown in a moving photo exhibition from Wednesday 26th Feb to Sunday 1st of March at Monash University, Caufield.

    Michael has been working with JCJ for many years on various projects and has also continuously offset with us. We have collaborated on various projects; such as the Climate Caravan in 2014. The ‘Climate Caravan’ travelled through Bangladesh, India and Nepal over 18 days to learn, share, participate, increase solidarity networks and strengthen local movements in the global struggle for food sovereignty, climate and gender justice.

    We are very excited that Michael is completing his research and sharing some of what he has learnt and seen with us here in Melbourne.

    JCJ is also very excited to be hosting the related Portraits of Change ‘Climate Action Competition’ that asks participants to explain an idea that has an effective impact on the environment and climate change under $100. Click here for the competition link and information.

    Description of the exhibition:

    The Portraits of Change Exhibition connects young people from Australia, Bangladesh and China through positive-themed photographic storytelling around climate change and environmental issues. Discover powerful and moving photo-stories and videos created by youth participants across the three countries who are taking inspiring local action in the face of environmental impacts. Contribute your own message in response, or a photo-story showing environmental action in your own life or community.

    Details:

    Entry: Free

    When:
    Exhibition open 26 February โ€“ 1 March 2020, Weekdays 11 am- 6 pm, Weekend 10-5pm.

    • Wed 26th Feb 6 pm:  Opening night celebration
    • Thurs Feb 27th 5:30-7 pm and Sun March 1st 1-2:30 pm: Photo and project workshops
    • Sat Feb 29th 1-2 pm: Artist talk and tour
    • Sun Mar 1st 3-4 pm:  Closing celebration

    Where:
    MADA Gallery, Monash University, Caulfield, Building D, Ground Floor, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East

    Info: http://www.slf.org.au/event/portraits-of-change-global-photography-exhibition/ and https://greenphotovoice.org/
    Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/262875901343270/

  • Website Revamp

    JCJ has not updated our website for quite a number of years, and our volunteer committee identified last year the need for an updated look.

    Over the past couple of months the committee has spent many hours trying to create a great looking website and rewriting or reorganising content. The aim has been to make the website easier to navigate and to understand the how JCJ operates with ease.

    We hope you enjoy this new look and thank you to our committee for working so hard!

  • 2019 Support for Klima Action Malaysia (KAMY)

    KAMY is a new grassroots youth-led climate organisation started in 2019, based in Kuala Lumpur. KAMY advocates representative climate action by empowering vulnerable groups and communities in Malaysia. Their activities include capacity-building workshops, climate protests, and community and indigenous advocacy. JCJ began a relationship with them by donating to help build their website:ย  https://en.klimaactionmalaysia.org/. This donation helped them kickstart their organisation and connect with target communities around Malaysia. It has been a valuable and versatile tool to grow their organisation through donations, subscriptions, and publicity.

  • 2019 Carteret Islanders Ongoing Support

    JCJ continued to support Tulele Peisa, the organisation helping relocate Carteret Islanders from their climate change-threatened atolls to the larger island Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. With this round of support, the Tulele Peisa purchased cocoa seedlings and ran workshops on cocoa farming, climate change adaptation, and financial literacy. They also constructed raised garden beds on the atolls to prevent saltwater intrusion from ruining crops for the people still living there.

  • Events with Kanchana

    Events with Kanchana

    • Tamil Feast at CERES Wednesday 10th April: 7pm (limited seats)
    • CERES garden events Wednesday 17th April: 9.30am & 11am
    • Green Faith/ARRCC walk Sunday 21st April (Easter Sunday) 4pm
    • Earth@Peace Conference 23rd & 24th April – (Sold Out)
    • Lentil As Anything Abbotsford fundraising breakfast Saturday 27th April: 10am-11.30am

  • 2018 Vanni Yathra

    JCJ partnered again with our Sri Lankan partner organisation ECO-V to support their seventh yathra (journey). Like the previous yathras, the projects focus on creating young green leaders to combat the effects of climate change and to promote environmental awareness. The Vanni yathra was the first journey under the leadership of a yathra alumnus, Newton.

    JCJ managed to fundraise the costs for all 30 bicycles required for the 30 diverse youth to take the 10-day training journey. The key issues addressed during this yathra were food safety, clean water, climate change, healthy living and reducing our carbon footprints. Northern communities, still recovering from the effects of thirty years of war, had little background knowledge of these subjects. JCJ also supported the creation of a short documentary about the 2018 yathra, which you can watch here.

    The final reportย has lots of great photos.