Student Leadership Team Term 2 2026
It has been a busy term for our Student Leadership Teams! Scroll down for a quick glimpse of some of the exciting things that they have been up to. Planting season has started and our student leaders are always at the community planting events helping out. They loved being involved in our biggest event, Greening Taupō Day, and have had fun rescuing native seedlings and getting into predator control too. Our senior student leaders have been offered extra opportunities such as an Enviro Leaders Summit in Te Awamutu, a geothermal energy session, and a bush skills course.
We were very proud of Angela Schur, one of our senior leaders who has been on the team for many years. She received the Youth Volunteer Service Award at the Volunteer Taupō award ceremony. She has taken lots of volunteer opportunities whilst on our team and it was fantastic to see that recognised.
We try to give our student leaders as many authentic leadership opportunities as possible. This group of Year 6-7 tamariki from Hilltop School presented an application to the Creative Communities Scheme for funding for murals for the outdoor classroom project that they are leading. We were so proud of them. They wrote speeches, practiced them, then presented them to a room full of adults. That took a lot of courage! They were successful at receiving the funding and have been busy painting the murals with the guidance of local artist, Sue Graham.
Our coordinator, Rachel, took a group of three Taupō nui a Tia College students to the WRC/Enviroschools Enviro Leaders Summit. They stayed the night in the marae at Te Awamutu College and had a day of learning at Sanctuary Mountain with other young enviro leaders from around the Waikato.
Our student leader, Meghan, took on the challenge to design a sign to go into the Waipāhīhī Botanical Reserve by the pekapeka roost boxes that a local volunteer has made for us. This project is in response to our detection of a long-tailed bat at the reserve earlier in the year. Hopefully, the sign and the roost boxes will be installed next term.
An adventurous group of student leaders and their parents joined an Adventure Works bush skills course on a rainy day in the Pureora Forest. They learnt how to make a shelter, use a compass, make a fire, and identify native plants.
Contact Energy is an awesome supporter and sponsor of our programme. Some of our senior student leaders were lucky to get an opportunity to have a tour of the Wairakei Power Station recently and learn all about how geothermal power is made. They were also able to speak to people who work for Contact Energy about career pathways in the industry. Then they were given a tour of a geothermal stream restoration site, where they learnt all about rare geothermal plants and efforts to protect this fragile ecosystem.
Our native seedling rescue project continued this year with students collecting ferns and seedlings from under plantation Forest with the support of NZ Forest Managers. These plants were rehomed in local school and gully restoration sites. A couple of buckets of kōwaowao (hounds tongue fern) were even planted out in the Reporoa Primary koru garden.
Our Predator Free Kids learnt all about introduced predators and made tracking tunnels to see what is lurking in their backyard. They got to talk to Kane Stafford from Epro all about jobs in the industry too.
Then, the Predator Free Kids built trap boxes with Robyn from Predator Free Taupō and made a trapline at through the KGT planting site at Spa Park. They will regularly check the line this year.
At the Greening Taupō community planting events, our students help out in lots of ways. They do the planting demo, then support people who are unsure how to plant, showing them what to do. They collect the pots, mulch the plants, pick up rubbish and get stakes into the ground. At the start of the event, they run the registration desk and organise certificates for children who attend. Then as people finish planting, they serve them sausages and hot drinks. We really value the student leaders’ contributions to these events.
At our biggest event, Greening Taupō Day, students took on many roles. They ran activities such as a bug hunt area, a fungi display, predator bowling, an obstacle course, an art/craft station, face painting and more. They worked on the BBQ stand, handed out food to hungry stall holders and took photos. Many of their parents kindly volunteered on the day too. We were grateful to all of them for helping make this event possible. They all had lots of fun, as you can see from the photos!
Thanks so much to all of our student leaders and their parents, and also to the community members who offer them so many fantastic opportunities.
