“Making the Good Things Last”
“Kia mau tonu ai ko nga hua pai”
United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development
A response from the people of Aotearoa New Zealand
Education for Sustainable Development: Breaking it down
We began our journey by agreeing upon a proverb that truly reflects our perspectives of ESD - but that also breaks it down into a simple concept that everyone understands: particularly young New Zealanders. We were saved this task during a school visit when a young girl summed up our aims for the decade in a typically, resourceful Kiwi way:
"Oh you're Making the Good Things Last!," she said.
We nodded and realized that this youngster had created our touchstone for ESD: essentially, "making the good things last" is exactly what we are all about.
For us here in New Zealand the decade is about safeguarding those things we value as a nation. Our environmental, cultural, social and historical taonga or treasures: those things we vow to safeguard for all New Zealanders - past, present and future.
In October 2006, we hosted our second UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development stakeholders forum in Auckland. Over the next few months we will be endorsing the strategic documents produced by this meeting.
Bands of Hope: A Sustainable Symbol for the Decade
A symbol for the decade in New Zealand that was itself sustainable was launched last year when we unveiled the "Band of Hope": a wrist band woven from Native New Zealand flax or harakeke. Stakeholders learnt how to make their own Bands of Hope from Waitakere Mayor and DESD advisory committee member, Bob Harvey; the Mamas (a group of senior Pacific women who are traditional weavers); and scores of youngsters from the Glen Eden Holiday Progamme.
Bands of Hope are symbols for sustainability that make sense, in a typical no-nonsense, Kiwi way. We wanted an educational alternative to wrist bands produced masse and made out of plastic. We have plans for a nationwide roll-out and have also received enquiries from organizations in the United States who would like to launch their own Bands of Hope: using natural resources from their own regions.
A performer from Te Whanau Apanui Kapa Haka
Partnership with Te Matatini: National Kapa Haka Festival
Unique to the people of New Zealand, traditional Maori performing arts are a national treasure or taonga. Te Matatini: the Aotearoa Traditional Maori Performing Arts Festival (http://www.tematatini.org.nz/) is our premier event, showcasing New Zealand's top tribal and urban Maori kapa haka performing groups.
With some items - such as traditional tribal chants or moteatea - over a thousand years old: these taonga remain our nation's oldest manmade treasures. Apart from ancestral marae or meeting houses: one of the only other places these ancient items are still performed is on stage at Te Matatini.
Last year UNESCO and Te Matatini management signed a partnership agreement celebrating the festival as a premier cultural event that makes significant contributions towards the sustainability of New Zealand's indigenous culture.
Cultivating significant and enduring relationships with key stakeholders is a fundamental way in which we see our role as promoters of the decade, here in New Zealand. Te Matatini is the largest single gathering of New Zealand Maori people on the planet with a population of 50,000+ expected this year: and now UNESCO and the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development: "Making the Good Things Last: Kia mau tonu ai ko nga hua pai" will be there as well.
An Email to my Mokopuna: Making the Good Things Last
Plans are underway for a major interactive online project in which New Zealand youngsters will be emailing their descendants a hundred years from now. Students will be asked to email their grandchildren - or mokopuna as we call them in New Zealand - to tell them about the treasures or taonga that they want to make sure are still around in 2107 - as well as some things they hope to make happen by then. Suggestions from New Zealand's children so far, include the following treasures they want to guarantee for future generations:
- Being able to go swimming in the local creek
- Going camping in our forest
- Being able to speak Maori
- Diving for paua (abalone) and crayfish
- Staying at my family's marae (ancestral Maori meeting house)
- Protecting our stream from pollution
- Drinking water that is clean
- Air that is not polluted
- Grass to play on
- Peace
- Star gazing at night
- Celebrating Matariki: Maori New YearRemembering ANZAC day
- Voting
- Whale watching
- Visiting the seals down at Cape Palliser
- Solar cars
- Solar electricity in all houses
For more information please go to: http://www.unesco.org.nz/