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We are really proud of one of our members, Petra Jellyman, who won a Ministry of Youth Development national youth award for Volunteering recently! Petra has been part of our Youth Council since 2013 and has held the role of Chairperson and Secretary in the past. Petra is one of those people who gives up heaps of time to make things happen for other people. She also volunteers with GirlGuiding NZ as a Ranger in Leadership and is part of their Ranger Advocacy Panel, a national panel of 9 girls who advise GirlGuiding on what advocacy initiatives the organisation should focus on. Petra has volunteered for the Community Meal for a couple of years in the past and also volunteers at school - Head Librarian, Prefect, Peer Supporter and part of a group running a weekly club for year 7/8's. Phew - with all that time given to others, it is not surprising to us to see Petra recognised nationally for her mahi! Petra was presented her award at the Beehive by the Minister for Youth, Peeni Henare. “Aotearoa is incredibly lucky to have such a diverse group of young people working hard to make our country a better place. The recipients of this year’s Awards have achieved so much and contributed to their communities in many ways. I believe that recognising positive actions taken by young people is one of my most important roles as the Minister for Youth,” Peeni Henare said. The awards recognised 14 recipients across 7 categories. Youth Council visited Innovative Waste Kaikōura yesterday to check out their operation. IWK's Chloe ensured we had the appropriate people cones (fluoro vests) for leading and following the group while we looked through the whole site. We were really impressed with the changes to the yard, the professional worksite and logical flow for recycling. A visit to the landfill site was eye-opening to say the least - plastic, plastic and more plastic - stunning to see how much is coming in as 'dump' rubbish and going into the ground. We visited the sorting shed where Wendy showed us (and had some very keen helpers) to sort recycling into the appropriate fadges and cages. Sonya then showed us how a fadge is compacted - 35 fadges to make one bale of plastic to be sent off for recycling. Chloe had spot prizes for answering questions correctly and we learned something amazing - 11 KYC members weigh 764kg! So what did we learn from all of this? We can do our bit by recycling correctly at home. This means WASHING the recyclables (especially meat trays!) Putting recycling out in the correct bins is really helpful and making sure that if we drop recycling off at the yard that we sort it properly. The biggest change we can make? INFLUENCE what our whanau purchase. Check out which products come in the least amount of packaging. An example is buy a big bag of chips and break it down into small re-useable containers in our lunches instead of buying minipacks of chips. Thanks for IWK for the invite to see what you do and to see the challenges you face. We've got our thinking caps on to see what we can do to support this going forward. |
