Last Wednesday the Otago Girls’ Enviroschools group kicked off the year with a hui held at the Otago Polytechnic.

We were given a tour around the hub of the Polytech and a few surrounding buildings by Jen Rodgers, the Otago Polytechnic Sustainable Practice Advisor, where she highlighted aspects of sustainable technology and practices in place at the institute. This was a very engaging start to the hui that allowed us all to get into the right mindset for the rest of the afternoon.

We heard from Jennie Upton, an Enviroschools facilitator who plays a huge role in the development and support of our group. She got us to individually come up with ideas we are passionate about and then collate them all under different topics like education, social, waste management etc. We broke up into groups to develop the ideas for the topics we personally favoured and then reported back to the whole group with our evolved proposals and discussed how we could go about implementing some of these ideas. We also talked about the logistics of any challenges that may accompany them.

The hui was an excellent opportunity for the girls involved in Enviroschools to get a grasp of what’s in store for the year ahead as well as get to know each other given the growth our group has experienced this year. It’s fair to say we left feeling invigorated and enthusiastic on the buzz of our plans for 2020!