NEWS

Watering a mangrove seedling every morning and afternoon doesn't stop for a weekend or a school holiday. The Mangrove Warriors at St Joseph's Catholic Primary in Crib Point kept it up for four straight months. The student leadership group grew out of the school's wider Sea is Our Best Friend program: once the whole Grade 3/4 cohort had planted mangrove seeds, the Mangrove Warriors took over daily care of the seedlings as they grew, watering, monitoring and troubleshooting, wi

Six months before the maternity garden project began, teacher Jess O'Neill says some of her Year 12 Vocational Major students "would never have done what they did." Twenty-two students from Leongatha Secondary College spent 18 weeks leading, not just helping with, the regeneration of Gippsland Southern Health Service's maternity garden: consulting with the hospital's Aboriginal Cultural Liaison Officer on culturally significant planting, designing a low-maintenance dry rock g

In 11 hours and 15 minutes, a Beechworth teenager and eight friends walked 40 kilometres for the 40 Hour Famine, raising more than $2,000. When adults supervising the walk told her to stop after she picked up injuries, her answer was blunt: "If others do it every day, I can do it once." That's Amy Schilling's approach to most things. In 2025 she founded Teens Who Care, a youth-led volunteering program she built almost entirely herself, partnering with the Beechworth CFA, Land