We held our Wai Festival down at the Mapua Wharf amphitheatre. As part of their Kaitiakitanga studies, Ruma Ngaio focused in on water. They discovered that there wasn’t much drinkable water in the world and because the population is increasing very quickly, it won’t be long until there isn’t enough to go around. This got them thinking… does everyone know that there is not a lot of drinkable water? People need to know how precious water is, how little there is, and how we need to take care of it. We need to appreciate how lucky we are to have plenty of fresh, drinkable water daily.

The Wai Festival was a beautiful day to be down at the wharf sharing our learning and celebrating that we are lucky to live in a place where water is available at the turn of a tap.

There was a great turn out of parents, community and general public/tourists at the event. The best part was that the visitors were genuinely interested in what the children had to say and took part in the activities they had set up.

The students learnt about freshwater during a visit to the Riuwaka Resurgence. They were amazed to discover that there is less than 1% of the Earth’s water that is fit for consumption and able to be accessed. When I asked, so what? What are you going to do about it? They discussed a festival to celebrate that we have water at the turn of a tap. We brought the other 2 classes in the Y5/6 team onboard, and we held the Wai Festival on the 17th of November.

We had lots of information kiosks focussing on different aspects of water; wetlands, water in our food, animals, the water cycle, healthy streams. We also had drama performances, songs, interactive poetry and pledges stations, dance and art, and poetry displays.