Source: Radio New Zealand
Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi project lead Dr Mawera Karetai. Supplied/Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi
Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi has been awarded nearly $300,000 in research funding from the Centre of Research Excellence Coastal People: Southern Skies to give rangatahi a hands-on education about climate change.
Project lead Dr Mawera Karetai (Kai Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Waitaha) told RNZ kids needed education to understand what the future impacts of climate change would look like and as a way to alleviate climate anxiety.
“Especially here in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, when it starts to rain, our kids will look out the window from their school and wonder if they’re going to get home, wonder if their parents are going to get home, wonder how bad the flooding is going to be and are there going to be any slips, and all of these stresses that happen in their life.
“We came up with this really cool education package that teaches our kids to understand what’s actually happening in the climate.”
The funding will enable researchers to create and distribute hands-on ‘Earth Science kete’ to schools.
“We’ve already run this as a pilot programme and the kids loved it, but so did the adults,” she said. “The adults became kids too.”
Karetai said each kete would come with different resources and tools for the kids to run experiments, including ice-melting experiments to explore sea-level rise, laser tools for observing land movement, emergency preparedness planning and food resilience kits that support local growing
One set of resources are earthquake-shake tables, which can run scenarios simulating earthquakes, while the kids build structures on the table to see how they hold up, she said.
“We’re helping the kids to understand truly what a long and strong earthquake actually looked like, then we talk about what’s the appropriate response to that. When should you worry and what should you do?”
Kids also get the chance to begin putting together their own Civil Defence family emergency plans, which they then pass on to their families to continue together, she said.
“Even here in Whakatāne, we had a tsunami evacuation just a few years ago, but if I ask parents where their school evacuates the kids to, they often can’t tell me. I’m quite alarmed by that, because if the parents don’t know, the kids also don’t know and that uncertainty leads to a little bit of anxiety.
“We’re trying to address that.”
Rangatahi need hands-on experiential engagement opportunities, so they get to do fun stuff and learn along the way, she said.
“Our rangatahi these days, gosh, they’re a cynical bunch, there is no doubt. Their access to information, they’re constantly bombarded with misinformation, so they’re cynical about everything.
“This is why this hands-on science is just so good, because they can see that it’s real. They can see how it works.”
Too often, parents believe whatever they see on the internet, she said.
“Our kids don’t think that way. They want to know, they want proof, they want evidence and, gosh, I think we’re in good hands for the future.”
Karetai said, with extreme weather events growing and becoming more frequent, the impacts were not experienced equally with Māori communities often on the frontline of coastal change.
Karetai was elected to the Bay of Plenty Regional Council at last year’s election and said she came into local government with goal to represent the smaller communities, like Murupara or Te Kaha.
That on-the-ground knowledge comes from years of working with rangatahi, she said.
“My heart is in making sure that our rangatahi are fully equipped with all of the knowledge that they need to be able to manage the uncertainty and complexity of the future that they’re growing into.
“In the regional council, I’m that voice at the table, reminding the other councillors that these are the things that we need to be thinking about.”
Following the Bay of Plenty pilot, Awanuiārangi plans to expand the programme to other coastal communities across Aotearoa and into the Pacific, as further funding partnerships are secured.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
