Bendigo talks aim to inspire

AN environmental symposium from the United States will be held in Bendigo this month and will try to tackle some of the world’s most critical sustainability concerns. Titled Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream, the symposium will be held at La Trobe University’s Ironbark Centre on Saturday, January 15. Volunteer organisers and presenters include Zerin Knight and Helena Read, of Castlemaine, and environmental experts Jane Monk and Neil Mitchell.Ms Knight, who works at La Trobe University, said the symposium would look at new opportunities for individual and group action that could bring about an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just planet.“By linking environmental management with traditional indigenous approaches to sustainability, we can achieve the best of both worlds,” she said.The symposium was endorsed by a company called Be The Change, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to inspir-ing ordinary people to take responsibility for our shared global future.Ms Knight said all four presenters were volunteers who were inspired to actively engage in bringing about a new dream for a modern industrial culture that would accelerate the necessary changes for the survival of the Earth and its inhabitants. “We are facing a very real crisis that our politicians and commercial institutions have not been able to address, not for lack of will, but because they have an outmoded way of seeing the world,” said Jane Monk, Be the Change facilitator. Participants of the symposium would be “blown away”, Ms Monk said, by the videos featuring some of the world’s most respected philosophers, scientists and community leaders. She said the symposium would also feature short films and dynamic group interactions.It will be take place from 10am to 3.00pm. For more information or to register for the symposium, visit www.changingthedream.org.au