This programme aims to support people from other cultures in maintaining cultural craft skills, sharing knowledge of reusing and recycling materials for craft and to provide an opportunity to sell crafts.

The approach used with the Reuse and Create programme, is through the introduction of crafts which support living sustainably, not only through the materials used, but with the purpose of using craft items as a part of our daily lives. We have started with supporting our craft circle in designing and decorating reusable shopping bags, which naturally leads into discussions as to their use and then to shopping sustainably.

Some formal sustainability education sessions are all a part of the programme too, but it is fascinating to hear from the ladies who attend craft circle some of their stories when we meet on a Friday afternoon. Whilst sustainability is already a part of the understanding of other cultures, the terms we are familiar with can be quite baffling. How do you explain the term 'energy', it has so many different meanings in English and what about 'carbon'? "What is carbon?" I was asked the other day, we hear about carbon daily in the media at the moment, but explaining what it means can be quite a challenge. Recycling itself is a term that is not exactly clear, for the Burmese girls who attend the craft circle, it is just a natural part of their daily life to make the most of any materials on hand, why would you throw something out that could still be useful for some other purpose? It is no wonder that Australia can be a confusing place for those new to living here. We have all the luxuries possible, electricity which is available all the time, not just occasionally, an abundance of food in the supermarkets and hot running water any time we want it. The way some Australians waste food can be quite a shock, however electricity and water are not necessarily regarded as a resource which can be wasted. Once the concepts and the methods of how to treat electricity and water as resources to be used respectfully, our cultural and linguistically diverse participants are likely to be our best advocates yet for sustainable living.

A lesson worth remembering for all of us, whether we are working with other cultures or not, the down to earth understanding can be there already, but the language and words we use needs to be appropriate. If all that fails, hands on demonstration is the best way and of course refer to that wonderful principle 'be the change you want to see'.

A big thank you to Heights Sewing Centre for the donation of the sewing machines for the program, Raetains Curtains, Shades of Geelong, Rawson Interiors and Geelong Blind Company for donations of fabric offcuts, and thanks to all those who have dropped in donations of wool, buttons and beads.

Reuse and Create

Wednesday afternoons 1pm – 3pm at the Northern Community Hub

Friday afternoons 1pm-3pm at Wholefoods Cafe