Alumni and Supporters

Teacher turned environmental education trailblazer Catrina Luz Aniere always wanted to work with children, but figured out early on in her career she wanted to do it differently.

“I always wanted to teach. I had a passion for working with children, but I suppose I wanted to teach better,” Catrina explains. “I had some fabulous teacher mentors as a young person, but I was always attracted to the idea that there were better ways for teaching children - better ways of working with kids.”

Graduating from ECU with a Diploma of Teaching (Primary) in 1981, Catrina moved to Port Hedland in her second year of teaching, something she says shaped her teaching philosophy.

“I was transferred to Cooke Point, and it was a very multicultural school in Port Hedland right on the coast, literally on the mangrove wetlands,” Catrina says. “There was a little kid, he had been down to the mud flats. The tide had been in and gone out, and he came in with a hermit crab - and it made perfect sense that you were making your curriculum place-based.

“And so that got me on the idea that wherever I taught, the place became the centre of what we did in the classroom. That was the philosophy I grew in those days in Port Hedland and then wherever I went, I took that philosophy with me - that you used your local environment as your palette.”

Years later when teaching in South Perth, Catrina spearheaded a whole-school initiative to incorporate the Swan River into the curriculum, by caring for the Milyu Nature Reserve.

“That became the real impetus for doing science and exploring indigenous history and advocating for holistic curriculum,” she says. “I ended up in a partnership with the City of South Perth and Perth Zoo, where the kids at our school were allowed to adopt an area on the Swan River foreshore called Milyu.

“In 1995 we were selected by the United Nations Environment Program to put in an application to share the story of what we had been doing at the school – and got selected to go to the first children and youth conference in the world for the United Nations Environment Program.”

Catrina says it gave the two South Perth Primary students who attended the conference in Eastbourne, United Kingdom a real role as leaders, hearing from young people around the world about groundbreaking environmental initiatives. On their return they joined with two other young Western Australian delegates to form Kids Helping Kids – an environmental conference run by kids for kids.

Inspired by these young people who wanted to change their world, Catrina gave up her secure teaching job to follow a dream to co-create a youth environmental organisation, and Millennium Kids was born.

“We started developing this idea that there was youth voice and engagement. They didn't want to just talk about the environment, they wanted to do. We were really encouraged to go wider than just one local government, and so in 1999 we incorporated and became a not-for-profit organisation."

“Right from the beginning, youth voice was central to what we do. Our constitution has a youth board of 15 children 10 to 24 years of age, and an adult council that are 25 and over. The children aren't a little committee that meets - they're the decision makers, and we have to listen to them.”

Millennium Kids empowers young people with a ‘skills for life’ approach, and tackles environmental issues such as water, air quality, waste, energy and climate change. The Aboriginal-led project Kids on Country - in the Great Western Woodlands in the southwest ecoregion - has been reconnecting young people with their environmental-cultural homelands for eight years using cycles of experiential visits, creative reflection, stories from elders and practicing, playing and learning.

As CEO and cofounder, Catrina has worked with tens of thousands of young people to identify challenges in their communities and develop practical solutions.

“I suppose that's what Millennium Kids gives me. It gives me the freedom to work with children and other teachers and educators, to listen to the kids’ ideas about how they want to learn, and then build that into some long-term programs,” she says.

“When we started this idea that we could run a children's conference - run by kids for kids - we got so many people saying no. And my philosophy was always, you’ve just got to keep going until you find a yes person.

“You've got to learn new things, and it's a constant challenge, but that has never outweighed the excitement about doing something that is incredibly important.”

Catrina’s journey with ECU has come full circle over the past two years, working as a researcher in conjunction with the University’s Centre for People, Place and Planet.

It is easy to see why Catrina was honoured in this year’s Australia Day Honours list; awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the General Division, for service to children and youth, and to environmental education.

“It’s a really lovely accolade for over 25 years of pushing this barrow around, that young people have the right to have a say and participate in shaping a better world, particularly in relation to the environment.

“And if I can use the award to amplify that message, then that's what I'm going to do.”