Enviroschools bus tours a first for North

Dozens of teachers and students will take to the road shortly for a first-hand look at their peers’ environmental education initiatives in the region’s inaugural Enviroschools bus tours.

Enviroschools is a whole-school approach to environmental education. It encourages student-driven action, based on sustainable management of resources in several key areas of school life.

The Northland Regional Council (NRC) played a key role in bringing Enviroschools north in 2003 and there are now more than 30 local schools in the programme, which began in 1993 and now includes roughly 700 schools nationally.

Susan Karels, the NRC’s Enviroschools Co-ordinator, says a condition of the Council’s involvement with the national Enviroschools programme is that it holds an annual regional hui for member schools in Northland.

Mrs Karels says due to Northland’s large geographical spread, in previous years organisers had typically hosted two annual hui within a fortnight, one in the Far North District and the other in Whangarei.

While those hui had been based at single locations, this year organisers had decided to take participants on the road instead.

“Northland has many Enviroschools carrying out all sorts of inspiring work. Normally we stay put in a single location and schools present on what they’re doing. This year, we thought it would be really worthwhile to check out their various sustainability projects first hand.”

Mrs Karels says the first of two road trips will be held on Wednesday 5 August and will take in the area around Kerikeri.

“We plan to visit Oromahoe School and the Aroha Island Ecological Centre, which Kerikeri’s Riverview School uses weekly as an outdoor classroom.”

Two days later (Friday 7 August) it will be lower Northland’s turn with a Whangarei-based itinerary that will take in the city’s St Francis Xavier and Onerahi Schools.

Participants will then head to the Waitaua River at Tikipunga, where participants will visit Te Kura Kaupapa Maori O Te Rawhiti Roa’s streamcare action project.

Mrs Karels says roughly 100 people in total – including several members of the region’s Northland-based Enviroschools facilitation team – are expected to take part in the two trips. A maximum of five people (teachers and/or students) can attend from one Enviroschool and places are being filled on a ‘first in, first served’ basis.

Further information about the Enviroschools programme is available via the Regional Council’s website www.nrc.govt.nz/enviroschools