Projects to Support

Projects To Support

CERES is a 4.5 hectare environmental park located on the banks of the Merri Creek in East Brunswick, Melbourne. The CERES site was formerly a rubbish tip! The process of transforming it into an eco-oasis was started 27 years ago by local people and volunteers. Their vision was to set up a real place which acts as a model for a sustainable, socially fair and creatively rich society. Today CERES engages with 470,000 people annually in this vision, in its education programs, organic gardens, markets and café, training programs and community festivals; audiences across Victoria; Australia and internationally.

CERES is committed to creating a better world. By redefining meaning and purpose, success and happiness in terms of our relationships with one another and the environment, we strive to create a new way of being.

CERES is unique in it's integration of education, social wellbeing, sustainability, diversity and the arts. Here school children throwing a boomerang or exploring solar panels are seen alongside people eating organic food at the café, artists readying for the next community festival and people from disadvantaged backgrounds training in organic gardening.

CERES’ philosophy is why only focus on the problems? - let’s create solutions – let’s sing up a world we want to be part of. That is, simply knowing what the problem is, is not enough. CERES’ initiatives strive to be practical and accessible; and people learn by rolling up their sleeves and getting involved. As a global community we face significant challenges, particularly in matters of climate change, water crises, war and inequality. We strive to meet these challenges with creativity, innovation and pragmatism.

By supporting one or more of the following projects, you will join with us in our passion to create a better world. Please contact cathy@ceres.org.au for further information.

1. Aquaponics Garden
CERES has been promoting urban agriculture, community and school gardening for over 20 years. Now that just about every community and school either has,  or is building, a garden of their own it’s time for CERES to lead the way again.

Aquaponics gardens enable people to grow large amounts of high value organic produce and fish in an energy and water efficient system. CERES has built a pilot aquaponics project taking nutrient rich water from commercial fish ponds fed on food waste from our Organic Café and cycling it through self contained herb and vegetable beds to grow large amounts of high value yield. This is a garden that can fit in a backyard or be scaled to a football field that will help feed cities into the future. If we can demonstrate and train our community to build and operate their own aquaponics gardens then we’ll be seeing them sprouting up in community and backyard gardens everywhere.

The CERES pilot aquaponics ponds system has just been completed and the fish are soon to be released into the ponds. We need investment in an aquaponics gardener to bring the system to life and maintain its productivity.

$40,000 employs an Aquaponics Gardener
Project Currently Supported

2. Sustainable Ways Of ‘Being’
This project aims to cultivate transformations that foster positive and sustainable living. These transformations will be at a personal, social and environmental level. This pilot project involves employing a research and program coordinator to source and articulate current understandings in this area; and develop a network of people and organizations aware of and supporting this work. The coordinator will facilitate community workshops and seminars which assist in reconsidering the beliefs and values we, as Westerners, live our lives.

In CERES’ 27 year history, we have not had the resources to keep up to date, and further innovate in the nexus between social issues and those of the environment. Your support will help us start to become a research based learning community.

$10,000 employs a program coordinator

3. Car Free Site
CERES aspires to be car free, maintaining a haven for visitors, in particular children. We aim to purchase an electric vehicle similar to a large golf buggy for the purpose of deliveries and pick ups throughout the site. Some site works would also need to be done to accommodate this approach to sustainable transport.

$12,000 buys an electric buggy

4. Community Kitchen
The new CERES Centre will feature a community kitchen. The community kitchen has attracted incredible interest from the community, and we know that it will become a huge feature of the Centre. The community kitchen will create a kitchen space where people from all backgrounds can come and cook together, eat together, preserve food and be in community together. This support will fit out the kitchen with the equipment needed to make it the success we know it will be.

$10,000 increments to buy equipment, total project $60,000

5. Cultural Village
CERES seeks support to upgrade the African, Indian and Indonesian Villages. This exciting project will see a total revamp of the Village area with new landscaping a more open design.

The villages have had an interesting history. For example, built over 10 years ago with funding from Community Aid Abroad, the African village has survived 5 separate arson attacks and in each re-build, harnessed greater community support each time.The Cultural Villages play an important role in greater cultural understanding. Over the past 10 years, 120,000 students from across Victoria have taken part in CERES Cultural Education programs.

$5,000 increments supports the Village upgrade

6. Electric Vehicle Conversions
CERES is about to launch our first Electric Vehicle that we have converted on site! To value add to this, we will conduct promotion and education opportunities including an ‘EV Rally’ to tour electric vehicles throughout Victoria incorporating community education, information sessions and test drives. We will also create an education display for the community at CERES of photovoltaics capable of charging electric vehicles.

CERES will also prepare a business plan for electric vehicle conversion enterprises. You support will go to assisting us innovate and educate in this important climate change solution.

$25,000 promotes electric car conversions

7. Beautiful Fences
The Organic Farm fence urgently needs upgrading. Inspired by the beauty of the new Nursery fence, the Farm fence would be made out of recycled hardwood. In addition to aesthetics, it would provide protection to the community because the Farm now contains numerous water bodies (see Aquaponics Garden above).

$15,000 builds a beautiful fence

8. School Incursions
Sustainability practices in schools require a whole school commitment but particularly student leadership. CERES Incursions are visits by CERES staff to schools to provide CERES sustainability education sessions. CERES Incursions provide momentum to teachers to maintain their skills and knowledge, as well as training for students in waste, water, energy,
biodiversity and the formation of environment clubs and action teams.

What about buying one or more Incursions for a school or cluster of schools known to you? This is particularly useful for schools in regional or rural areas who don’t get a chance to visit CERES. Build the investment in our future citizens and environmental leaders by sponsoring Incursions from a wide range of topics ranging from environmental debating to energy monitoring.

$500 to $2,000 per school

9. Local Five km Products
In the new climate friendly era we are entering, distance travelled is vital. The more goods and services we produce and purchase from the local area the less energy and fuel is consumed, the less carbon emissions we produce, and we therefore reduce‘food miles’.

The 100 Mile Restaurant in Melbourne has attracted attention – but CERES can do even better with its 5km products! We will create a new range of products made from produce sourced within 5km of CERES. We will also create a marketing campaign and launch the 5km range.

The range will include:

• Mushrooms
• Vegetables and Fruit – grown in CERES market gardens
• Vegetable boxes
• Free range eggs
• Chickens
• Preserves and jams – by Seven Stars, our catering enterprise that trains refugee women
• Organic seedlings
• A 5km Café breakfast, main meal, herb tea, sweet, snack or cocktail

In future we might add local timber products, compost, worms…
Your support will provide development funds to get this project up and running.

$15,000 - $20,000 creates and promotes a 5km range of products

10. Youth Enlightenment
CERES recognizes the importance of engaging young people, and creating opportunities for them to be inspired about the issues of sustainability and creating a better future. By holding regular monthly youth music sessions, where young bands are mentored and provided with performance opportunities, young people will be regular participants at CERES, and be able
to engage with all that CERES has to offer.

$20,000 produces 10 youth events

11. Carbon Sinks at Schools
These are the leader schools of the generation aiming at carbon neutrality, carbon trading and carbon sink status. We are already working with schools having fun at sinking a net 90 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. Schools known to you could do the same. A carbon sink school needs support to work through its energy audits, staff professional development, student leadership, carbon reductions and trading.

$3,000 supports a school to sink carbon

12. Local Food Systems Officer
Food brings a community together and is a not-negotiable part of everyone’s wellbeing. With current world food shortages, climate change and peak oil looming, community food security and urban agriculture will become more and more a part of our lives. CERES already operates a local food system – we run social enterprises growing seedlings, fruits, vegetables and mushrooms. We sell them via our Organic Market, at local farmers markets, to wholesalers, to our Nursery, Organic Café and Seven Stars catering group. We also have Community Gardens, the Urban Orchard project, a baking group and a chook group. We have published research into food miles. We run education and training programs to teach adults and children how to understand and get hands-on with their local food system.

To equip communities with tools to build their own secure local food networks, CERES wants to share our food systems knowledge through talks, community forums, workshops, a how-to kit and to respond to the hundreds of requests for help we receive on food related issues each year.

CERES is seeking to invest in a person three days per week for one year.

$35,000 employs a person to educate other communities

13. Urban Orchards For Australia
CERES has pioneered a unique volunteer-run project where once a week people from our neighbourhood come together to swap surplus fruit, extra herbs, vegies, seeds and seedlings at a trestle table at the CERES Organic Market! From a pilot project in 2004 the Urban Orchard has grown to include over 190 families around Moreland. New Urban Orchard projects have sprung up in the City of Yarra and in Adelaide. With the success of the Urban Orchard and an increasing number of enquiries for communities to set up their own, CERES would like to actively promote this home grown idea via an Urban Orchard Kit and to develop materials and a workshop for delivery to all levels of government, the media and community groups around Australia. CERES is looking to fund a person two days per week for one year to spread the good word around Australia.

$25,000 creates a ‘how to’ kit for Urban Orchards

14. Gasification Electricity Generation Plant
The new CERES Centre, to be built over the next three years, aims to be a zero emissions building. In order to achieve this aim, we must generate our own electricity. Our research shows that gasification is the way of the future. By converting food scraps and waste wood from the community, we can create enough electricity to run the building and possibly generate electricity for the rest of CERES. This is innovation at the cutting edge, and we are proud to research and demonstrate this way toward a climate friendly future.

$100,000 creates a gasification plant at the CERES Centre

15. Computers
In order for CERES to continue its passionate work in creating a better world, we need to provide our committed staff with good quality tools. This is often hard for us to achieve and new computers are a scarcity. By upgrading computers we can work faster and more effectively towards our urgent mission.

$1,500 per computer upgrade

16. CERES Global
CERES Global supports community organisations in India and Indonesia who are doing impressive work towards sustainable, climate friendly, development. CERES Global organises visits to the community organisations in India and Indonesia – where people can share skills to strengthen the organisation's work, while also learning about the environmental and social issues of the area, and becoming absorbed in some of the cultural richness. On returning to Australia, participants can continue researching and fundraising to provide ongoing support for projects which they believe will make a vital difference.

CERES Global needs financial support to employ a staff person to coordinate CERES Global activities, trips, and follow up activities – which will support excellent developmental projects in India and Indonesia.

$30,000 employs a Global Coordinator

17. Wurundjeri Park Ranger
CERES is in the country of the Wurundjeri people. We want to promote Wurundjeri culture and heritage through enhancing the use of CERES by local Aboriginal communities, establishing adult Aboriginal cultural education programs including a cultural history walk along the Merri Creek, and conducting cross cultural education programs for the private and public sectors. For many years we have dreamt of employing a Wurundjeri park ranger. Your support will assist in this becoming a reality

$50,000 employs a Wurundjeri park ranger

18. Kingfisher Magic
As CERES gradually became fertile once again and the gardens and creek valley bloomed, the beautiful Australian bird, the Sacred Kingfisher, returned. Its coming home on the banks of the newly revegetated creek symbolises the rewards gained through repairing the land – for all could see that the beauty and diversity of native species will again flourish. The Sacred Kingfisher hadn’t been seen in this area since industrialisation. Their return is worthy of a great celebration and is a potent educational tool. Therefore each year we embrace the bird’s return with a festival which includes hundreds of young people. Through performance, art , dance , music, puppetry and lots of magic, the festival each November brings joy and hope to the community.

Increments of $5,000 or $18,000 to support artistic development, and engagement of disadvantaged groups and school groups in the 2009 festival.

19. Pasture to Permaculture
The CERES Organic Farm includes a paddock area that has outstanding permaculture potential. The paddock area connects the CERES Organic Farm and Market area with the new CERES Centre. Our vision is to increase the productivity of the area and demonstrate best practice permaculture principles in action by combining productive fruit and nut trees and other edible plants with foraging livestock. The area would be irrigated with water collected from the existing stables and chook house roof.

The permaculture area would be open to the public and education programs via a pathway from top to bottom, and include practical takehome demonstrations of permaculture in action, backyard chook care and herbal pest control.

$50,000 creates a permaculture area

20. Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative (AuSSI)
The Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative (AuSSI) is a nationally inspired program administered by DEECT Victoria and CERES in Victoria, aimed at dramatically reducing water use, greenhouse gas emissions and solid waste output in school environments, where schools take the lead in a community building approach. Over 370 Victorian schools have already participated in the program.

AuSSI Victoria is a prototype of a cost effective means of rolling out sustainability education in all schools and communities. The program includes a wide range of opportunities to incorporate sustainability initiatives within Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS).

CERES is supported in a small way by government and yet there are 5000 schools in Victoria, so many more could become sustainable schools! For $2,750 per school a donor could support one school (your old school, your local school, your children’s school) or clusters of schools. This contribution buys the mentoring support of the CERES sustainable schools team for one year and sets up the school with all the plans, strategies actions, policies it will ever need in a cost and time effective manner.

Would you like to see Australian schools as centres of demonstration for environmental technologies, designs and behaviours, propelled by a sustainability curriculum and richly connected to the local community? Then this community initiative is for you. Sustainability is fundamentally Education ...make a difference to all our lives by transforming school communities.

In Victoria $2,750 per school or increments thereof ($20,000 for 7 schools)