STUDENTS’ RESILIENCE PROVES A WINNER
IN 2021, Year 9 students from across Cairns and the Tablelands participated in a crossschool’s project called Cairns in Your Hands.
The project was run at Smithfield High School and saw the involvement of Trinity Bay, Atherton, and Redlynch High School students.
Taking place over four days, 25 students, in multi-school groups, were tasked with developing a Coastal Adaptation Resilience Strategy for Cairns.
Over four days, students collaborated with JCU Professors, Cairns Council Sustainability Officers, and undertook field investigations to the Cairns CBD and Green Island to build an understanding of the potential risks from sea level rises and natural disasters to Cairns.
The main task was to identify at risk infrastructure, how this infrastructure could be defended/retreated and how and where would we would do so.
Throughout the project we developed critical thinking, creativity and communication skills to solve a real-life issue impacting Cairns.
In September, Cairns in Your Hands was nominated as a state finalist for the 2022 State Resilience Awards.
The Resilient Australia Awards celebrate and promote initiatives that build whole of community resilience to disasters and emergencies around Australia.
The awards recognise collaboration and innovative thinking across all sectors including school projects like Cairns in Your Hands.
The school was invited to attend the Awards Presentation Evening in Brisbane at Suncorp Stadium.
The keynote speaker Major General Jake Ellwood who has served in some of the highest ranks within the Australian Defence Force, both in Queensland and nationally, and co-ordinated the national recovery for the Australian Defence Force’s response to the Black Summer bushfires in 2019-20.
Maj-Gen Ellwood was more recently appointed the Queensland’s Recovery Coordinator who led one of the largest-scale recovery operations the state has ever seen following the recent Brisbane floods.
He spoke of how resilience during combat was no different to resilience during a natural disaster and the need for communities to develop resilience to remain sustainable.
The Cairns in Your Hands Project was nominated for the Resilient Schools Award. This category was for schools across the state who had developed projects which contributed to community resilience.
Our school was successful in winning the
state award which was presented by Maj-Gen Ellwood.
This award was a just reward for all the hard work students from across the four participating schools invested in the project and we were grateful to receive this recognition on such a high level.
We now look forward to representing Queensland in the National Awards in Canberra in late November.