News prior to 4th April 2011

School Holiday Fun at Futureworld – “Exploring Renewable Energy”

This program is suitable for ages 6-14 years
Come and explore how the sun, wind and water can produce energy. Fun activities include building mini green houses, wind powered toys, and lots more.
Dates- January 11th 13th 18th &20th (2011)
Time- 10am to 12noon
Cost- $15
Phone- 4274 2939

Thank you Carina!!!

This year Carina Tobia joined Futureworld as a regular volunteer. Carina has been involved with the centre on numerous levels and contributed to lots of projects throughout 2010. She's assisted with School groups, educational programs, admisintrative tasks and also marketing campaigns. Everything Carina has done has been a fantastic help at the Centre! Next year Carina will be starting an Environmental Science degree at Wollongong University and we'd like to wish her the best of luck with the course and take the opportunity to thank her for all her work and commitment to the Centre in 2010. Thank you Carina!

Centre Displays

Earlier this year we received a grant from the Lord Mayors Foundation to begin to redevelop the centre displays. This grant will cover information, multimedia and graphic design development and the complete construction of one display. At this stage the lucky display will be…WIND. Were anticipating having a shiny new display ready for the end of January 2011!

Monitoring wind on Lake Illawarra

Thanks to Lance Carr and Radotech an anemometer has been installed at our Warrawong site. This is a wind speed monitoring device which sits on a 10m tall pole. It is connected to a computer based in our wind power display. The anemometer is hopefully a precursor to the installation of a wind turbine at the site.

Recent School visits a Success

Since has recently run programs for 5 primary schools and 4 high schools. We were very pleased to see both students and teachers enthusiastic to learn about Sustainable Technologies. Our new Lake Illawarra Education Program also ran smoothly and it was great to see students engaging and interacting with the diverse activities.

We have also recently facilitated tours for Scouting, Legacy and Probus groups as well as a program for children from Barnardos.

Work Experience Students

Futureworld would like to thank Aaron and Daniela who underwent one week of work experience at our centre. They were both very willing to learn about the dynamics of our organisation and all the aspects that ensure the continued functioning of the centre from marketing and office work to setting up activities ready for students. We were glad to see our work experience students enjoying their time here and teaching younger children about our environment. Both Daniela and Aaron were a fantastic addition to our team especially during the busy time when we were organising our new outdoor Lake Program. Thanks again to both of you and we wish you the best of luck in the future.

Volunteer with Futureworld and Make a Difference

Futureworld is a cool place for both young and old to volunteer their time. We are always on the lookout for volunteers so why not give us a call. Better still if you haven’t yet visited the new Eco-Technology Centre please do drop in, we are situated in the Lake Illawarra Education Centre at Warrawong.

Upcoming Events on the Futureworld calendar

Futureworld is not only a fantastic interactive centre, we also do numerous things in the community. Here are a list of events were involved in:

1. World Environment Day at Wollongong Botanic Gardens (1/9/10)

2. Gifted & Talented Students Program (9/9/10)

3. Fete of the Earth at Stanwell Park Public School (16/10/10)

4. Shellharbour Solar Expo at Shellharbour Workers Club (17/10/10)

For more info on any of these events please email us.

We won the 'Dedication and commitment to the Environment' Award!

Last week we attended a function held by Healthy Cities Illawarra and were delighted to receive an award in their environmental category for dedication and commitment to the environment! We were honored to receive the award and also awed by the other award winners on the day!

Healthy Cities Illawarra is part of the World Health Organisation and was originally founded in the Illawarra by our late Dr Pat Mowbray. The organisation works to improve and promote the health, physical environment and quality of lift of people in the Illawarra.

For more information on Healthy Cities Illawarra visit www.healthycitiesill.org.au

Futureworld AGM another success!

Future world held its annual general meeting on Thursday 15th of July. Prior to the meeting there were two speakers.

Dr Phil Flentje from the University of Wollongong gave an informative talk on landslide monitoring stations across the Illawarra.

Meryl McKerrow, the Futureworld education Officer spoke of the programs being developed to enhance the Futureworld Centre. Just a few of these programs include:

Lake Illawarra Estuarine Education Resource. This is exciting hands on outdoor activity in the Kully Bay Wetlands for stage 3-5 Students.
Develop demonstration garden to link the inside and out side programs of Futureworld.
Review Futureworld display and worksheet information.

Office Bearers for the forth-coming year are:

POSITION	OFFICE BEARER
President	Mr. Robert Coombes
Vice President	Dr Muttucumaru Sivakumar
Treasurer	Mr. Jim Wallace
Secretary	Ms Belinda Schuster
BOD Member	Dr Judy Messer
BOD Member	Dr Paul Cooper
BOD Member	Dr Tim McCarthy
BOD Member	Dr Troy Coyle
BOD Member	Mr. Colin Markham

A Friendly Reminder

Your Futureworld Membership is Due for Renewal

Here at Futureworld we are looking forward to a great year ahead. We hope that you’re eager to again participate as a member as you have in previous years. Your membership is a vital and greatly appreciated part of our organization.

Continued membership ensures

The Futureworld continues to grow and that information and activities we provide are educational, interesting and valuable to you and the wider community.
Cash donations to Futureworld can be claimed as a tax deduction and hopefully this factor encourages donations and sponsorship.
Sponsors, philanthropic and grant organizations regard Futureworld highly and membership numbers are a critical factor when considering donations.

Membership Categorys

Individual	$25
Family (2 adults + up to 3 Children)	$35
Concession	$12
Corporate	$125

Volunteering with Futureworld has many rewards

Futureworld is extremely lucky to have many wonderful volunteers. These volunteers range in age from eighteen to eighty. They act as guides, perform maintenance, assist with office administration, and research projects for our Education Officer.

Futureworld is very fortunate that three young people; Carina Tobia, Mohsen Mehran-Manesh and Emily Cukotevski, have been volunteering their time during the last three months.

Carina who is in a gap year before attending University is volunteering as a centre guide and working in office administration.

Mohsen who was completing his masters of environmental engineering at UOW (now successfully concluded) volunteered one day a week. He worked with Meryl McKerrow, our education officer, on a program for the Lake Illawarra estuarine education resource program.

Emily is working with Jodie Cooper, the Centre coordinator, in compiling centre management documents.

Oceanlinx using wave power to supply our local energy!

Oceanlinx is a leading international company in the field of wave energy conversion. The company has developed proprietary technology for extracting energy from ocean waves and converting it into electricity. On March 30th Oceanlinx launched its 3rd Generation Wave Energy Converter, the Mk3PC. This latest design and pre-commercial platform, is one of the most efficient and cost-effective wave energy technologies in the global scene today.

"We are very proud to announce that this unit is the only wave energy device in Australia of this size to be connected to the electrical grid and producing energy. In fact, we are one of very few wave energy developers around the world that have grid connected wave energy devices. This is a very exciting achievement for both Oceanlinx and the renewable energy sector."

For more information go to Oceanlinx.

A focus on our contacts

Peter Weaver has been volunteering with Futureworld for over 5 months and has been making significant progress updating our contact database. We have a long way to go, but Peter is in the process of cleaning out over 6000 contacts and ensuring that everyone on the Futureworld database wants to be there and that their details are correct. It's a massive job and were delighted to have Peter on board to help us out! Thanks Peter!

Clean Up Australia Day a massive success!

March saw another great Clean Up Australia Day hosted at Futureworld. We had heaps of volunteers help with the clean up and collected over 9 garbage bags full of rubbish and 4 bags of recyclables from around the lake. We all left with the feeling of really making a difference and Lake Illawarra certainly looked much cleaner for our efforts! Hope you can join us next year!

The end of an era!

Over the last three years Russell Verdon has been a major contributor to Futureworld. Russell has managed the office, lead tour groups and more recently taken a position on the Board of Directors as Treasurer. Russell has recently decided to step down from the board and also take a step out of the day to day operations at Futureworld. Russell has been an exceptional volunteer and will leave a significant gap in our resources. If you, or anyone you know is interested in volunteering, please drop us a line.