Wainui Beach School's TREEmendous Penguin Project

Wainui Beach School in Gisborne is embarking on The Penguin Project: Little Blues, an initiative first started in 2018 when Wainui Beach residents discovered Little Blue Penguins nesting under their houses.

As part of the 2021 TREEmendous Education Programme, an initiative from the Mazda Foundation, Wainui Beach School can further develop their work on creating a safe environment for Blue Penguins in the Wainui Beach area.

The Penguin Project aims to further the students understanding around how they share the environment with other species. The goal is also to increase their knowledge on how the Little Blue Penguin is suited to its habitat and their response to environmental changes.

Ruud Kleinpaste – the Bugman and Dr Riley Elliott, Shark Scientist visited the school to talk to students and teachers about how they can learn from nature and the important role that living organisms play in our ecosystem and their impact on our environment.

Some of the students took Riley across the road to Wainui Beach to show him a Blue Penguin House they found, and of course pointed out Shark Bay along the way.

Kleinpaste also spent time providing teachers with resources to help identify ways they can incorporate the environment as an immersive part of the curriculum so that students can learn about nature in outside classrooms.

The school is one of five winning schools from around the country who each receive $1,000 to go towards an environmental project along with 200 native trees for their school grounds from TREES THAT COUNT.

Jodie Saunders from Wainui Beach School said “Having the team from the TREEmendous Education Programme at Wainui Beach School has been an invaluable addition to our school wide inquiry on the Little Blue Penguin this term and to our Enviroschools programme overall. Riley and Ruud's passion for the ocean and the world of insects is so infectious and they had the whole school buzzing about how valuable sharks and bugs are in our ecosystem and what we might find right here in our own backyard. It's not often that you get to have experts right in front of you and the engagement and questioning that came from our kids was next level.  Our students also got to see first-hand just how you can turn a passion into a career. Working with the Team from the TREEmendous Education Programme has left us inspired and we can't wait to get started on taking our inquiry deeper as well actioning some new projects!”

David Hodge, Managing Director of Mazda New Zealand and Chairman of the Mazda Foundation is delighted that the TREEmendous Education Programme is continuing the fantastic work the initial Treemendous project undertook in schools around New Zealand for over 10 years.

“We look forward to seeing the results of the work the schools will be doing with Ruud and Riley.”

The TREEmendous team, including Kleinpaste and Elliott, will continue visiting the remaining schools throughout 2021 to engage with the students and inspire them in their environmental projects.