Gore High School students and teachers were awarded the Mainland Minerals Environmental Award runner-up prize at the Gore Community Awards on Friday for their project Science Around Us.
The project team was also nominated to receive the Environment in Education award at the Southland Community Environment Awards held in Invercargill last week.
“The students were really excited to be runners up," says teacher and project lead Amy Christie, who is also an alumnus of the Science Teaching Leadership Programme - an initiative that boosts participants' confidence in teaching science.
"The school is proud to have achieved their goal of taking students out into their own community to experience science happening in their own area.”
In Science Around Us, students are exploring their local world in a scientific way, and then applying what they learn to help Hokonui Rūnanga Ngāi Tahu Hokonui Rūnanga care for their wetlands and kōura (crayfish) farm.
“It can make such a difference when local communities work together on problems,” Amy says.
The project will finish in December, but Amy hopes the connections will remain strong and that there will be more collaborations on problem-solving projects in the future.