North Shore water winners

May 14, 2007

North Shore City has won four of the 10 regional Wai Care Awards that were presented at a ceremony on Saturday.

Wai Care is a water quality education, monitoring and action programme for community groups and schools throughout the Auckland region.
North Shore City Council’s environmental programmes co-ordinator, Jo Harrison, says Wai Care is an important initiative as people deserve to know how their actions on land, affect streams and the sea.

“If we can raise awareness, educate and encourage behaviour change on land, it can only benefit our streams and ultimately the sea where so many North Shore residents enjoy spending their leisure time,” she says.

This year the Wai Care Awards were a feature of this year’s event, named the “Wai Care Wade In”, held at Butterfly Creek in Manukau City on Saturday.
Ms Harrison says the event is a chance to check in with groups and monitor their techniques and the equipment they are using, to ensure they are collecting reliable water quality data.

“It is also an opportunity for groups from across the region to get together, network, share ideas, successes and stories,” she says.

“This year there was a chance for Wai Care to recognise and reward all the amazing work that our Wai Care groups across the region do all year round.”
Winner of the ‘Dedication to Regular Monitoring and Data Entry Award’, Dave Johnston, is a Wai Care pioneer. He was one of the first members of the North Shore community involved in the programme when it was originally piloted in 2000.

Mr Johnston says he saw Wai Care’s potential to become a programme that should be in every school.

“Environmental awareness has to start at the first rung of the citizen ladder, and that is with the kids,” he says.

“I’m pleased to see the Wai Care programme is now well on its way to reaching that goal, and as I am not getting any younger I think that I can hang up my gumboots and let the younger members carry on the good work.”
Christine Robson, syndicate leader at Forrest Hill School, received the ‘Inspirational Use of Wai Care by a Teacher Award’. Christine says Wai Care was an excellent programme to involve her Year Three students in.

“Their enthusiasm was contagious among other classes in the school and they were genuinely interested in what they could do to promote the programme,” she says.

“Throughout the year, our inquiries lead us through reading, oral language, science, written language, outdoor education, art and learning to use powerpoint as the tool for the final presentation.”

Other North Shore City winners were Pauline Lawes, Bernard Stanley and Ross Garrett from the Long Bay Okura Great Park Society, for ‘Action Taken Against Pollution’, and Mandy Osborne won the award for ‘Excellent Action Planning and Forward Thinking’.

ENDS

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