About Kids Helping Kids "KIDS HELPING KIDS is a conference unique in its vision and unusual in its scope. For far too long we have denied ourselves the opportunity of listening to our children, of heeding to their pleas for a better world, for a healthy environment - their questioning's and their answers." Elizabeth Dowdeswell Chief Executive Officer of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Nov. 1996 Kids Helping Kids is an organisation of children who run an annual environmental conference for children. The conference is kindly sponsored by a number of independant organisations. The conference began when in 1995, 4 students from WA attended the 1st International Children's Conference in the Environment held in the UK. It was a direct result of Agenda 21 at the Rio Earth Summit Conference in 1992, stating that children should have more of a say. The conference was huge, with 800 children from 80 different countries around the globe attending. They discussed environmental problems in their countries and then discussed ways to counter them. At the end, the delgates produced a set of challenges to the world on what they thought should be done. These challenges were presented to the United Nations and then sent to all the governments of the world. Or that was supposed to happen at least. When the four students from WA, Alicia Curtis, Sarah Hatton, James Sippe and Sophia Ulgiati returned from the conference, they were ready for some action. But after nothing happened, they decided to hold their own conference, which became Kids Helping Kids. Jeremy McMinn joined the panel as a representative of South Perth Primary School. The conference began as just a discussion, but soon blossomed into a statewide conference for WA, with 100 students attending from as far away as Christmas Island and Mt Barker, and even a surpirse contingent from Malaysia. The conference ran from the somethingth to the somethingth of November, 1996 and was held at the Perth Zoo. At the end of the conference, the delegates put together a set of challenges to the world, stating what they thought should be done about various environmental probelms. These challenges were presented to the Prime Minister by Ian Kiernan. The conference was a huge success, and it was decided to hold a second conference in 1997. This was another statewide conference, and this time with some delegates from Adelaide. Some new people joined the panel of the 5 original students. They were Eva-Marie Middleton, Lennon Lewis, Tanith Blakers, William Sippe, Simon McBeath and Michalie Foley. The conference ran for 3 days this time, and was held at the Perth Zoo, City of South Perth, and with a sleep over at Rottnest Island on the third day. A new set of challenges were compiled, aimed to be more specific than the previous ones. All in all the conference was another great success, and another conference in 1998 is currently being planned by the panel, with a number of new additions If you wish to learn more about Kids Helping Kids and how to apply, please contact the project coordinator, Ms Catrina Aniere, by emailing her at envsound@cantech.net.au Kids Helping Kids is a Greenteams project: THE GREEN TEAMS PROJECT is an environmental citizenship project which aims to develop values, skills and databases of information through the efforts of Western Australian school students so as to restore environ -mental assets to the community. SPONSORS OF THE CONFERENCE: Alcoa of Australia Limited Broadwater City of South Perth Clean Up 2001 © 1998 Kids Helping Kids, Inc.