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OUR OWN ECO EDUCATION DREAM:

SOUTH COAST ECO ACADEMY

The South Coast Environment Society is working towards offering a senior student / adult training course in Riverton in partnership with our local high school Aparima College. The State Secondary school is only two blocks away from the Societies South Coast Environment Centre, is a registered NZQA provider and is fully supportive of the concept. Last year half an acre of vacant school land began to be developed as a school orchard with the student's involvement. We have four qualified teachers on our committee who presently all teach part time at the local high school in a variety of subjects but all with a passion and expertise in environmental education.

There are limited NZQA standards on environmental education available and we have the capacity to write new NZQA units of work for submission on much wider environmental topics then presently offered in NZ. We have extensive resources to support this initiative within and through the Centre which has been running successfully for nearly 12 years. These resources include large living collections of heritage vegetables and heritage fruit trees, an Aparima Nursery Enterprise growing local natives sold cheaply for restoration projects, a not-for-profit organic food shop and wide appropriate technology resources and skills.

We have extensive natural resources all, uniquely, within 2 km of the Centre and College: Sandy beach, rocky shore, stream, river, estuary, sea; native bush reserve, urban township, farm land. As well as a 16 ha wetland reserve, a community garden / orchard, a two acre 15 year old Permaculture food forest and an organic market gardener. Two organic farmers are on the edge of the town, one sheep, one dairy. We also have a breeder of heritage hens in the town! As we are only 30 minutes drive from Invercargill we believe our location is perfect for such a course.

We are grateful to Aparima College who are financially supporting the Professional Development of two of our Societies educators Robert and Robyn Guyton to attend the NZEEA conference in Dunedin this month where we hope to make links with NZ wide resources to make an eco-academy training course in Riverton a reality. We would be grateful of any suggestions or support you or your organization can offer us for this important initiative.

Distance Learning Programme The television crew from SIT filmed members of out Society and students organized by us, for their series on Organic Horticulture which screened twice daily over a period of 10 weeks; tremendous coverage for us and organics at the same time! The series is broadcast through the Sky network and is received country-wide. We covered topics like: building a cob oven, saving vegetable seeds, hand tools, pruning and grafting, planting flowering ferns to attract pollinators, native trees in the garden, raised garden beds, crop rotation, insect homes, keeping ducks and planting hedgerows.

The response from the viewing public has been overwhelmingly positive and has resulted in an increase in visitors to the Centre, following up on interest sparked by the television programmes. We are using the experience to help us formulate our plans to write NCEA level courses for the Ministry of Education, particularly with our local high school students in mind. We plan to establish an Eco Academy here. If you haven't seen the series yet, you should track it down, it's very good.

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