With a very strong environment student group, the Young Environment Leaders (YEL), who are also part of the Ricerland NRM YEL group, are regular participants in the Riverland YEL forums run by the Berri NRM Education officers and have hosted and run sessions to a number of these forums. In addition to this the Barmera Primary School YEL students plan and carry out a wide range of environment related activities both within the school and the wider community.

The YEL group has worked at brainstorming a particular issue, breaking it down into finer points, making connections with the issue and from there taking action. They have reflected on the issue, discussed the areas of success and improvement and then gone back and refined the process to make it work. An example of this was the power audit. They noticed that classrooms and the hall had the lights on although there was no-one in the area. They brainstormed what they could do and through a process of elimination decided to count the numbers of lights in each area. They monitored the areas over a week during the two break times and put together data showing lights were being left on and how many lights were involved. They worked out a power usage with lights on and lights off during break time. The results were taken to classes and staff. Reminder cards were put at all light switches and a review is being done midterm to see if an improvement has been made. These results will determine what the next steps should be.