For Science Week, the Zayed Team organised the Huon Valley STEM Expo on August 19th in the Huonville PCYC. The theme this year was “Food: different by design” and this was the 3rd year we’d held the event. We had over 30 volunteers run workshops for our attendance of over 400 primary school students from every state school in the Huon Valley. We are grateful to Inspiring Australia for their grant that helped us organise this event.
The event was opened by Zayed Team leader Aisha, followed by an opening speech from Huon Valley Council Mayor, Bec Enders. Professor Gretta Pecl, an IPCC scientist, was our keynote speaker and spoke about monitoring species to measure climate change.
The workshops included permaculture, germinating native food plants and seed bombs with Nipaluna Nursery and Huonville High year 7 students. Students peddled bicycles to cook doughnuts, built solar cookers in a masterclass, became citizen scientists and explored deep ecology. There are also displays from community organisations like Circular Economy Huon and the University of Tasmania. At lunch, there was a swap shop and students from Franklin Primary submitted the hottest solar cooker, winning a class visit to Fat Pig Farm. The day concluded with a Meet the Scientist session with the Young Tassie Scientists.
