Living Streets Association | 2023 July

Our Living Streets Youth meeting this month was joined by international students doing an English immersion and Community Education course. Together, everyone would get to know one of the local community groups and this time we chose to volunteer with Lyneham Commons.

These young people from diverse backgrounds worked together to grow their cross-cultural competence and communication skills. We had conversation activities, exchanged ideas, and planned events to make the Taiwanese students feel welcome and included in the LSA Youth Meeting. These exchanges allowed Living Streets Members and Taiwanese high schoolers to experience cultural diversity, through the greetings, language(s) spoken, body language, eye contact and gestures. It also helped everyone to reflect upon their own cultures and embrace cultural differences with an open mind. 

Our winter event involved collaborating with a local community group and inviting more volunteers to help. This time it was with Lyneham Commons, so we prepared a program with gardening and games. The discussion points of this agenda include how to invite, what to bring and where to meet before the volunteering, following the instructions of the members of Lyneham Common during the volunteering, and discussing activity ideas for after the volunteering works. We even got tips for engaging with young kids from Carmel Richardson, the President of LSA. 

This was the first time for the Taiwanese students to attend a community youth meeting, and they were thankful that everyone they met was so patient with their English. They thought that the youth here were all very good at expressing themselves, and thought it was great that they use their time to give back to their communities.

On the working bee day, we did pruning, weeding, mulching the pathways, and even built a small woven windbreak around some trees. Thank you to the Lyneham Commons volunteers who led the gardening activities. The concept of sharing an edible garden with the whole community was not only rarely seen in their country, but the international students said seeing people work together towards a common purpose was also very inspiring. 

The Taiwanese students also visited the Watson Microforest, and from these community projects, they had a lot of reflections, compared to their home country. They found the natural environment of Canberra incredibly beautiful as they see Taiwan as a “concrete jungle”, and they also thought it was beautiful to see so many people in the community who are willing to work together towards a common goal.

We can’t wait to have more of these international cooperation opportunities!