Retreat.
The Centre for Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Program has helped me to become more active in expressing my opinion on issues that I care about. It has clarified my thoughts and helped me to understand who I am.”- Meg Fricke
Environmental Consultant, Ernst & Young
The Centre for Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Program Graduate 2006
An integral part of the Fellowship Program are the retreats including an eight-day residential retreat held during July. The retreats aims to further develop skills introduced in the workshops through real-world application. During the retreats, fellows will be intensively coached by experts in a range of skills indispensable to successful sustainability leadership. A large emphasis is placed on the improvement of skills in the areas of environmental communication and effective media strategies. Fellow attendance for the full duration of the retreats are mandatory.
Strong leaders are strong communicators. During the week-long retreat fellows are given multiple opportunities to improve public speaking skills, to which end each participant is asked to nominate a sustainability issue for which s/he will become a spokesperson. In this capacity, each fellow makes an organised presentation to the local community, and is given the opportunity to further hone media skills through an intensive set of mock interviews with existing media professionals.
Example of a daily program from the 2006 week-long retreat:
- Media Practice Day
- Mock radio interviews with Laureen Deale, Jon Faine’s senior producer
- Recording TV news grabs with Graham Cumming, former Channel Nine News Chief of Staff
- Controlling the depth of TV interviews with Tom Bennet, television producer
- Letters to the Editor with Anna Boustead, Environment Victoria’s media expert
Following the 2006 retreat, fellows secured media coverage on a variety of sustainability issues through outlets including ABC Radio, TripleM, The Herald Sun, The Age, Crikey.com.au and MX.