Issue7
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New Plymouth students forging a bright future

Students from Francis Douglas Memorial College certainly have a promising future ahead of them, after representing New Zealand at the International Future Problem Solving Competition.

Future Problem Solving is an acceleration subject which offers accredited assessments for students under Senior Social Studies and Education for Sustainability. The programme focuses on equipping students with problem solving skills, developing creativity and collaboration, and encouraging active citizenship to shape the future. “Our students focus on the community strand of this work; so, they look for any issues or concerns in the local New Plymouth community, come up with creative solutions and create an ac on plan based on one possible solution. Then they carry out these actions within their community in the year leading up to the competition,” explained Robyn Wackrow, their teacher and a leading advocate for Future Problem Solving in New Zealand education.

Two teams of students from the college in New Plymouth entered the New Zealand Future Problem Solving Competition, both with inspired and impactful projects. ‘The Merry Forresters’ team created a fruit forest on some unused school land, sourcing funds for the 78 trees and other supplies from alumni, to create a sustainable source of healthy food for the local New Plymouth food bank throughout the year. The ‘Bo le Boys’ team collected plastic bottles, which had been supplied to the school in high volume following water shortages in the wake of Cyclone Gita, to create greenhouse pods that can be used over raised gardens to allow for the growth of tomatoes and other foods during the winter months.

“Both the projects are amazing; they’ve already made a difference in the local community and will continue to do so for a long me. If you look at the fruit forest that the students created, that will continue to produce fruit every year for the food bank to distribute - the food bank are really happy with this too as they normally only receive dry food and canned goods, so the fresh food will be great.”

The teams placed first and second in the national competition, winning the privilege to represent New Zealand at the International Future Problem Solving Competition in Boston in June. Fifteen other countries took part in the community focused category of the international competition, each representing the best of the best for countries like Turkey, China, Singapore, Australia and the USA.

Both teams from New Zealand placed first and second in their category; “It was a huge international competition, so it was such an achievement to come rst and second, they really deserved it - I was just so proud watching them represent New Zealand up on that stage.”

TSB Community Trust supported both teams, giving individual grants of $1,500 to students representing New Zealand at the competition, to help cover some transport and accommodation costs. “We already carried out some smaller fundraising ac vi es, such as packing at the supermarket and holding a sausage sizzle, but the grants from TSB really took the stress off those families to ensure that their children could take part in the competition. The boys worked really hard during this me; they had their other senior school work for exams to do as well as running these big projects. Ge ng the grant freed up their me at weekends, to enable them to spend more me on the project itself, putting in hours to work in the forest or build greenhouse pods rather than fundraising.”

We’re very proud to support these talented young students to represent New Zealand and to develop their skills for the future.

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