Last week a small group of dedicated year 7 STEM students spent 3 days presenting at both the Melbourne Water Kids Teaching Kids Conference and the Inaugural Catholic Education STEM/MAD day, which was an opportunity for primary and secondary schools to present on their schools efforts in the 'STEM' space whilst also making a difference for community and/or the environment.

Kids Teaching Kids is an annual event in its 20th year, where 52 schools from across Australia present workshops for their peers on issues related to water and sustainability. CRC's STEM team presented a concept called Wicking beds, which is a self watering garden bed that reduces evaporation and water wastage, is very versatile (a Wicking bed can be built above hard surfaces such as concrete) and reduce food waste by only harvesting the fresh food you need. All year 7's are now currently building model Wicking beds in their STEM classes, so watch out for the finished product!

At the STEM/MAD showcase, students had to pitch their idea and answer technical questions to a variety of judges from Universities, Industry specialists, Zoos Victoria and Educators from Catholic Education Melbourne. After a fantastic effort CRC's team was awarded the Archbishops Award for Social Justice, for the way students were able to demonstrate so clearly the way their Wicking Beds concept could change the world. I want to congratulate all the students involved and to acknowledge the many hours of meeting, emails and work they completed outside of school hours to create their presentations, props, posters and flyers.

Well done to the following students: Tri Truong, Genevieve Durand Deslongrias, Martina Tran, Dustin Nguyen, Alessio Singarella, Reuben Rock, Victoria Olatunbosun and Maire McEvoy.

Finally, here's a quote from VIctoria about her experiences of the week: