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Picnic for Change in Bendigo

By October 5, 20148. General News

 

Anne Denham is pictured here with Lisa Chesters, Federal MP for Bendigo presenting a petition of over 2 million signatures, collected by Avaaz world-wide, demanding action on climate change. View Lisa presenting to the House of Representatives calling for action on climate change and the renewable energy target as a result of Anne’s work.

The call to action for Anne to put Bendigo on the map along side London, Paris and New York hosting a Climate Picnic came from the Avaaz, a global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere. Avaaz also enabled Anne to collected the staggering number of signatures to support her call for change.

“I knew I could facilitate this event, even though I had some doubts.  When I approached the Bendigo Sustainability Group I found others in the community who would work along side with me”.   Anne shared. “In the end we had over 200 people attend”!

The first action Anne took was to review her notes from the Expand Your Impact workshop she attended earlier this year.  For Anne to make this project a success it was important to continually create opportunities to ensure the team, their partners and everyone involved got along.  Impact is created through how well connections are created and sustained between people.

The Climate Action Picnic caught the attention of the local media and social media users and succeeded in keeping the issue of climate change in the public mind.  A key outcome Anne was seeking.  However a comment she overheard affirmed for her all the hard work was worthwhile and gave her a real sense of having impact in the community – that “…the day was full of great conversations”.

 

Image by Colin Lambe