Youth can help too

At the museum's recent meeting on climate change, a young woman made the suggestion that today's youngsters were too busy on their PlayStations and social media to realise the world needs saving, and many of us present agreed with her.

However, I later clicked on the Northland Regional Council's website and found an amazing list of resources and activities that it undertakes to support environmental education.

The NRC obviously believes that children should receive education on the environment and that students doing things for Northland's awesome environment can have fun. The following list of headings from the website will give you an idea of the council's contribution to environmental education up north; awards and funding for schools, education events, education news from Northland and NZ, the Enviroschools programme available to all schools in Northland, dates of green community events, Northland's environment, Northland's coast and us, school information packs that assist school projects, free school visits by the education officer plus free teacher workshops to help them incorporate environmental education into their teaching.

The Northland Regional Council's Enviroschools regional co-ordinator, Susan Karels, says more than a third of her region's schools are Enviroschools and an "Early Years" environment programme, developed in 2004, is being tried out in Northland.

The Enviroschools website says Northland has 60 Enviroschools, with 11,303 children, while in the Manawatu/Whanganui region, we have 32 schools with 6457 students, so we are lagging behind.

With the Government reinstating much-needed funding ($7.6million) for environmental schools and Te Aho Tu Roa initiatives to help NZ children learn the importance of sustainable lifestyles, let's hope support like that available in Northland spreads throughout the nation.

The Enviroschools "kaupapa" is about the well-being of the whole school, community and eco-system. With a vision like that, our children will be able to relate to our natural eco-systems and restore the planet's environmental health.

They have the opportunity to learn how to create a better future.

Recently retired from Massey University, Graham Pearson is a Sustainable Whanganui Trustee and actively involved in Castlecliff's Coast Care project.