Better water education


Kilbirnie School's Henry Fox and Ethan Sneddon-Cope

Greater Wellington and Meridian Energy have joined forces to revamp our popular environmental education programme Take Action for Water.

The programme, aimed at Year 5-8 primary school students, used to focus only on rivers and streams but will now look at our region's whole water catchment area (where rain or snow drains into rivers, lakes, estuaries, harbours and the coast).

Thanks to Meridian's support, Greater Wellington has produced a new teacher resource kit, posters, and reference photos to help school students understand and identify the many features of a catchment. Meridian has also provided New Zealand-made environmentally friendly bags to all students involved in the programme.

Greater Wellington Councillor Prue Lamason says this new approach helps students, teachers and their communities to "take action" for the wider environment, not just streams. "Take Action gives students the knowledge and skills to make good decisions about their environment in daily life. There are two big benefits - the students learn by doing and they make immediate, tangible improvements to the world around them. In addition, Meridian's Take Action project fund, which is $10,000 per year for three years, means schools and students can turn their more ambitious environmental projects into reality."

Meridian's sustainability specialist Chris Montgomerie welcomes the opportunity to partner with Greater Wellington and help increase the environmental awareness of our region's young people. "For Meridian, sustainability is about doing things with full awareness and taking responsibility for your actions. We see the programme as a fun, informative way of understanding our impact on the environment and we hope it will encourage behaviour change."