Well, where did the year go? Christmas is already here, and we are busy wrapping presents! So talking about wrapping, let’s wrap up the year for the School.
Impact
The Supply Chain Sustainability School enables socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable supply chains for all Australian and New Zealand organisations through open access to educational resources. We have 6140+ Members from 2700+ companies that have accessed or 600+ resource catalogue, racking up 12900+ views.
Whilst Membership of the School is free, Fellows lead the School and pay an annual fee to fund the School’s operations. Fellows also volunteer on Working Groups that revise and create new resources for everyone to enjoy.
40 Fellow organisations gave their time and money to operate the School this year, and together we have not only achieved so many goals, but we have also set the School up to grow! Fellows formed three working groups Local Government, Property Services and Construction. These groups produced new learning pathways, eLearning modules, videos, events, infographics and fact sheets. They will continue in 2022 with two more groups, Manufacturing and Aotearoa New Zealand. These groups are fuelled by 100% volunteer power, and we are very grateful for all members who shared their expertise and gave their time.
We continue to live our vision, collaborative accessible education for a sustainable future, by partnering with projects to deliver sustainability training. Notably, in 2021 we established great working partnerships with Materials & Embodied Carbon Leaders’ Alliance (MECLA), Australian Architects Declare a Climate & Biodiversity Emergency, and Australian Engineers Declare Climate & Biodiversity Emergency.
Governance
From January 2022, the School will initiate stage 2 of our growth plans, including changes to our corporate entity and governance structures. This won’t look different to Members, but for Fellows and administrative staff, this is a significant milestone.
This year we rotated one third of our Board. Sadly we said goodbye to three longstanding and valued Advisory Board Members; Ainsley Simpson (Infrastructure Sustainability Council), Andrew Hogben (Mirvac) and Lauren Kajewski (Landcom). Our existing Directors Ricky Bridge (Downer), Peter Bounsall (Lendlease), Jim Green (John Holland), Sam Donaldson (Laing O’Rourke), Amy Hogan (Stockland) and Karolina Kubiak (Wyndham City Council), were joined by three new elected Board members; Nina Collinson (Glad Group), Brendan O’Keefe (ASCI) and Monique Isenheim (Infrastructure Sustainability Council). In addition, experts joined Directors on two advisory committees; the Finance, Audit, Risk and Compliance Subcommittee and the Nominations and Transitional Governance Subcommittee. Thank you, Stephen Thatcher (GBCA) and Julia Green (Corrs Chambers Westgarth), for your expertise on these committees.
Future
The School is screaming towards achieving all of our 2030 goals, including growing the resource catalogue to 5000+, growing Fellows to 100+ and covering all industries in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Office closure
This Christmas, the School has developed a special partnership COME-ON-SANTA and will be taking a break from Wednesday 22 December to 10 January 2022. However you celebrate this time of year, we hope you stay safe and enjoy a much-deserved break in the company of loved ones.
See you in 2022 to continue the decade of action!
Hayley, Hillary and Sue