student projects / personal fundraising

Student Projects

Room Three: Gulf Harbour School

Conservation Project:  Shakespear Open Sanctuary

This is an exciting project with three parts. The children:

- Cleaned up Okoromai beach and classified the rubbish they collected.

- Surveyed the sea creatures that live in the tidal area of Okoromai beach.

- Will do the same at Army Bay and then compare with results with Okoromai

The rubbish was taken back to school and the children classified the debris in 6 groups: plastics, glass, clothes, bones, recreation (balls and fishing twine) and a miscellaneous group which contained food wrappers, cans, wood, tiles, and cigarette butts.  The children then brainstormed where this rubbish may have come from and how they can raise public awareness targeting the sources.



The children being only 7-8, the experience of the survey was more powerful than the results may turn out to be.  Teacher Chrissy Crooks got each group to draw a scaled profile of the survey line and plot the creatures they found at the appropriate measure.

The final step is do the same at Army Bay then compare the results with Okoromai.

We will publish progress and the results of the project here.

PERSONAL FUNDRAISING

If you have done some personal fundraising for SOSSI and would like it to be acknowledged on the website, please email us the details as we would love to add the story to this page.

Red Beach School's Room 5 "Famine" - December 2010

The children from Room 5 at Red Beach School, along with their teacher, Mrs O'Reilly, decided to raise funds for SOSSI after Allan, our chairman, visited the school in Term 2 to talk to them about the predator-proof fence and the work we are doing to protect our native birds.

They came up with the idea of doing a 20 hour "famine" - meaning they all gave up something they really loved for 20 hours. Some of them went without talking, others went without screens, which meant they couldn't watch T.V. or use a computer or even look at their interactive whiteboard at school.

They did really well and managed to raise $320, which is wonderful! Allan and Maria visited the school to collect the cheque, give them an update on the fence project and present them with a Certificate of Achievement in recognition of their efforts.

Thank you very much, Room 5, well done! To see a couple more pictures, please visit our facebook page.

Cody's Challenge - June 2010

Cody Burgess is a Year 10 student and the son of one of the park rangers. Last June, he completed a special personal challenge: a 20km kayak trip to raise awareness of the Open Sanctuary project. He left Army Bay at 7am, paddled round Tiritiri Matangi and landed at Te Haruhi Bay at 10.30am, raising over $500 in the process! You can see him on our home page presenting the money raised to Allan Parker, SOSSI's chairman.

Check out Cody's blog to find out more.