Mum Janelle Cody ably supported her Waste Warrior sons - from left, Anthony, Caleb and Brendon Hazel - in their first ever public speaking engagement at TEDxKapiti last month. Photo / Helen Wall
Mum Janelle Cody ably supported her Waste Warrior sons - from left, Anthony, Caleb and Brendon Hazel - in their first ever public speaking engagement at TEDxKapiti last month. Photo / Helen Wall
When the inaugural TEDxKāpiti event was held at Te Raukura ki Kāpiti last month, there was great representation from the Horowhenua – Philip Sue (Pixar artist), Monique Davidson (HDC chief executive), and three young boys known as the Waste Warriors.
Anthony, 9, Caleb, 8, and Brendon, 6, Hazel, ably supportedby mum Janelle and dad Josh, are conservation activists who are taking massive steps to improve their local environment.
What started out as one small deed (picking up litter at a local park) soon expanded into much more, after gaining recognition from various community groups and producing a video with over eight thousand views.
Janelle was inspired to establish the Waste Warriors in July 2021 - a Facebook blog to engage with fans and share her boys' environmental journey.
Representing Horowhenua at TedX Kapiti last month, the Waste Warriors with their talk titled 'How small deeds are complete rubbish'. Photo / Helen Lea Wall
The Waste Warriors became involved in a number of larger environmental events over the following months, such as Clean Up Week and Get Outdoors Week in 2021, and the Upstream Battle in March 2022.
Keep NZ Beautiful chairwoman (and HDC councillor) Victoria Kaye-Simmons decided to nominate the Waste Warriors as potential speakers for the TEDxKāpiti event.
"We found out about three months before the event that the boys would be speaking," said Janelle, "though it was a shock to realise we couldn't use cue cards ... that the talk had to be memorised!"
Janelle also found it quite challenging writing the speech as she wanted to make sure it sounded like it was children speaking and there weren't too many big words in there.
Horowhenua's Waste Warriors were the youngest speakers at the inaugural TEDxKapiti event, held at Te Raukura ki Kapiti on Saturday, June 25. Photo / Karlina Mitchell
"It was structured but I wanted it to be them - to make sure it had that child's voice behind it rather than my own."
TEDxKāpiti organiser Lorraine Hamilton worked with Janelle and the boys as well, inviting them to her home to work on the delivery and presentation of their speech.
"TEDx doesn't usually have speakers who are as young as [the Waste Warriors], but I was very taken with their story and very impressed with [the support from their parents] so knew they had to be part of the event," said Lorraine.
Anthony was excited to do the event and found learning all his lines pretty easy, Caleb thought it was a bit freaky being the youngest speakers there, while Brendon said he felt scared and needed to hold mum's hand during the rehearsal.
Janelle would definitely be happy for the boys to do something similar to TEDxKāpiti again – at the end of the event the first thing they said to her was "that was fun – I want to do it again – I want to do another TED talk".
Organiser Lorraine said putting the event on was a huge leap of faith but the whole thing really superseded her expectations and the feedback from participants and the audience has been overwhelmingly positive.
"We will definitely be hosting another TEDx in the future ... we owe it to the event to put into practice all the learnings we had from this one."
Next step for the Waste Warriors is to source a little garden cart for the boys to take with them on their walks as the bags of rubbish they collect get pretty heavy for mum and dad to carry. Janelle intends to put little containers inside the cart so the boys can recycle as they go as well.
The Waste Warriors have also had a few nominations for TVNZ's Good Sorts – chances are we'll see these awesome young boys appearing on television soon to spread their environmental message further afield.
If you'd like to see the Waste Warriors TEDxKāpiti speech you can check out the YouTube link here: Waste Warriors TEDxKapiti
And you can follow their environmental adventures through their Facebook blog page here: Waste Warriors Facebook Blog
