Living Smart

Living Smart

Shani and Tim are possibly the most experienced Living Smart facilitators in Perth. They generally work together combining Shani’s background in education and facilitation with Tim’s fascination with energy efficient building design and practical hands on skills –together they make an inspirational team!

Living Smart is a multi-week course providing participants with the practical knowledge and skills to take action in their own homes and around the community. The Living Smart program was developed to enable participants to have an increasing awareness of sustainability issues, create positive change in sustainable behaviour among participants, and support and strengthen community relationships.

A Living Smart course typically runs over seven to eight weeks, with one two hour session per week. The course covers typical areas of sustainable living such as power, water, transport, productive and biodiverse gardening, as well as less commonly covered areas including healthy homes, healthy you, living simply, goal setting and community.

Although each facilitator brings their own skills, experience and style to the course, all courses have a good balance of the presentation of information, discussion and group work, as well as hands on practical participation. Guest speakers and field trips are used to deepen the participant’s knowledge and engagement. And participants have a great deal of input into the areas covered during the course.

We focus on encouraging behaviour change through goal setting, celebrating successes together and creating a supportive community of peers.

And the results?  Participants in Tim and Shani’s courses always rate the experience highly.

One group was recently asked to complete this sentence -  This Living Smart course . . . .  Here are their responses.

This Living Smart Course . . . .

-has been a joyous renewal of my energy and enthusiasm for community;

-has reconnected me with me . . . with what drives me, where I want my energy to go (and come from) and given me hope that I can make a difference and make my life more of what I want it to be;

-is a delightful adventure into the world we’d hope to live in. It makes the adventure real and achievable and places us as the heros and heroines;

-gives me a positive view on our world, makes me feel understood and give me lots of ideas and visions;

-has been refreshing, exciting, informative and in every way exceeded my expectations in my need to meet like minded people;

-gives you an inside view on what is going to happen if we don’t change our habits;

-is inspirational and motivational, supportive and connective;

-was fantastic and brilliantly informative;

-has been inspiring, with loads of great information that we can use to continue the journey, very supportive and fun;

-has helped bring foggy thoughts into a concrete vision that I will now consciously set about creating, with the wisdom, knowledge and input from others in the Living Smart community;

-makes me happy and reminds me why I think what I think and do the job that I do;

-came and just the right time as I needed to “do something” and the course prompted me to do several things;

-rocked my world! I loved the sense of community here and coming together every week to share and inspire.

For more information about Living Smart and courses near you, go to www.livingsmart.org.au or contact Shani on stay@thepaintedfish.com.au