About SOS
Students of Sustainability (SoS) is a five day camping conference for anyone interested in creating a more ecologically and socially sustainable world.
History
The conference began in Canberra in 1991 under the name "Students, Science and Sustainability". This first conference attracted 300 students to discuss matters of sustainability with respect to students and science. Throughout the past 17 years, interest and enthusiasm for the conference has grown, and the number of participants has steadily and exponentially increased. As SoS moves around the country, it spreads its unique, life-affirming, change-making energy to the University and community that hosts it...
SoS 2008
SoS '08 will be held at the University of Newcastle, from the 5th - 9th July, with camping close by. Students, community and Indigenous activists, academics, public intellectuals, environmental educators, social change agents of all stripes and from all over Australia will come and participate in a range of educational, practical and participatory forums and workshops. SoS is about imparting the inspiration, tools, motivation and education required for participants to inspire and educate others when they return to their own communities.
Opportunities
Feedback from SoS participants year after year testifies to enlightening, empowering and even frequent life-changing experiences.
SoS 2008 will be no exception. The conference will provide inspiration through personal connection with active and effective social change-makers and with the broader grass-roots movement. The conference will offer access to many future opportunities in study, volunteer involvement and contacts for career pathways.
Access to and involvement with national and regional campaigns and networks of activists will promoted and encouraged throughout the conference, providing opportunities for continued involvement.
Specific knowledge, skills, contacts and networks derived through the week will empower in a variety of ways unique to the particular individual. Skills workshops, including campaign strategy, lobbying, organising, facilitation, political and recycled art, gardening, home-made clothes and DIY renewable energy will empower participants in a diversity of practical skills. Empowerment through knowledge will also be a key focus with popular education (participatory) techniques to be encouraged throughout the conference (see program for more details).
Hope
The experience of the conference itself - popular education methods, open space workshops, participants' agreements, and a consciously and deliberately sustainable, creative and friendly atmosphere - will provide hope for a better world, belief in its' possibility and tangible avenues to pursue it.
Vision
The vision is to provide a conference that will bring together diverse groups of people to share inspiring and thought-provoking experiences, which encourage positive discussion and action aimed at creating ecological, political, economic and social sustainability in the world. SoS provides an opportunity for us to become empowered with the confidence, practical skills and motivation, required so that humanity can have a healthy relationship with the earth and all of it diverse ecosystems.
We are all Students of Sustainability!