Good Deeds 2020 winners, Waitaki Boys High School, work together with Rabobank, The Country and the community to clean up their creek.
Winning the Good Deeds Initiative will be "life changing" for the students of Waitaki Boy's High School, deputy rector Roger van Booma says.
The School Creek Restoration Project, aka "The Creek Boys", were working with the Enviro Group to restore Muddy Creek, which runs through the school grounds.
The boys decided they could use a hand with their project, so they entered the Good Deeds Initiative, a competition run by Rabobank, in association with The Country.
"They didn't believe it would happen," van Booma said.
"It was an idea about how they'd like to see their environment at school, and they put in an application and it got recognised. It's unbelievable really."
As winners, Waitaki Boys High School received $5000 toward their community project, along with a working bee made up of volunteers from Rabobank and The Country.
The boys' vision was to see the creek flow all the way through the school out to the ocean, "as it did many, many years ago," Waitaki Boys High School rector Darryl Paterson said.
Sam "Lashes" Casey (left) and Jamie Mackay strike a pose with the Rabobank Good Deeds team after a job well done at Waitaki Boys High School. Photo / Supplied
"Our final goal is to have the creek fully restored and water flowing through it, and it cleaned out of rubbish and looking fresh," a student said.
It wasn't only the boys who got involved with the restoration, as members of the community also pitched in to clean up the creek, Rabobank GM of country banking Bruce Weir said.
"It was a initiative that was put together by the students and it actually brought the community along the journey."
Meanwhile, Rabobank provided around 15 staff for the working bee, and The Country's Jamie Mackay and Sam "Lashes" Casey also rolled their sleeves up to help out with riparian planting.
"You can see around here today, just the passion that the team and the school and the community have for this creek restoration," Weir said.
The Good Deeds Initiative was all about identifying and supporting good rural community projects, Weir said.
"Things that we can really get behind".
Listen to Jamie Mackay and Bruce Weir talk about their experience at the Rabobank Good Deeds Initiative at Waitaki Boys High School on The Country below:
The best part of the Good Deeds Initiative for van Booma however was that the boys' project had been acknowledged.
"The most important thing to me today is that Rabobank recognised what those boys did on a bit of paper."
The restoration project meant "everything" to the boys who had organised it, van Booma said.
