Sustainable Living Courses

What is involved?

• energy efficiency
• eco-building design and insulation
• water use and protection
• gardening with nature
• organic veges
• waste reduction, including composting
• shopping with the planet in mind
• travel options and carbon impacts
• community resilience (new for 2010)

Typical courses are a one term series of two-hour evening sessions (7 to 9 sessions in all) held weekly, led by a skilled tutor.

Timings often 7pm to 9pm and at high school or polytechnic venues, but occasional courses are run in the daytime at community venues, WEA and in rural areas by REAP.

The course makes use of facilitated discussion, group activities, film clips and slide talks; some have visiting guest experts or council staff. They provide informative printed handouts and suggest activities to try at home between sessions. Website information sources and calculators are used in support, for example to work out your carbon footprint. 

Course participants often arrange a teabreak within each session and a shared meal at the end. Some have field trips and a few continue as an informal study group in members' homes after the course ends.

Our participants are more frequently women than men, but otherwise a real mixture of ages, backgrounds and income levels.They are a great place to meet people with similar interests. We have run courses to meet the needs of different cultural groups including Maori and for Mandarin Chinese speakers.

It is usual to be charged a fee at the outset, when booking, which helps pay for the tutor's time, venue and photocopying costs. From 2010 some fees will rise and course availability and locations may change, as the Government announced major cuts to Education Ministry/TEC funding of high school-based community education. High schools were contesting this Budget 2009 change, on which they were not consulted.

Where are the courses?