Education

Grey Main School Feb 2017, Hokitika beach activity

Education plays a key part in the West Coast Penguin Trust’s activities. We are welcomed into schools, armed with Kevin the taxidermy Kororā and Toni the Tawaki (fiordland crested penguin; the South Island West Coast’s second resident penguin). We visit schools and educate the students about penguins, thus encouraging discussions about the environment and conservation issues. It is never a difficult mission to get the students, and staff we should add, to fall in love with penguins, excited to find out that they have these wonderful creatures on their local beaches and then devastated to find out the struggle of survival they face due to humans! Using our Blue Penguins & Other Seabirds resource book, which links games and activities throughout the entire curriculum, fitting into any subject, the schools get involved in activities to learn lots of facts and then moving on to learning how to become the ‘Guardians of their penguin’ and taking the message home to their local communities.

Many schools have gone on to being involved in penguin projects where they have built nest boxes for local colonies, set up trapping lines and monitored and observed local beaches, carried out beach clean ups and raised awareness in the community with newspaper articles, leaflets and presentations.

The school projects are invaluable and we are always very grateful for all the hard work and enthusiasm that goes into these projects.