In June 2008 nine of us from Norton Wildlife Watch went to a children’s conference on the environment. In the past the Tunza conferences have been held in many countries including America in 2004, Japan in 2005, Malaysia in 2006, and finally Norway this year. Every conference has a name and this year’s was Creating Change. The conferences are held for 1000 children from 105 different countries aged between 10 and 14 and their chaperones. They are organised by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
On 15th June we travelled by plane to Stavanger airport where we were taken by bus to Madla Camp. Madla Camp is an army training camp on the outskirts of Stavanger city. When we arrived it was late at night and we were all tired and wanted to get to our rooms! Each day had a different theme. They were energy, water, biodiversity and sustainability. The conference was held in the University of Stavanger. Every morning after breakfast we got a bus there and went to a huge marquee where we had children’s and guest presentations that were all based around the theme of the day. In the afternoon we had workshops and field trips that we had chosen beforehand. All of the workshops were to do with the environment, for example re-designing recycled clothes.
For the field trips we had to get a bus to where they were held. There was a variety of choices like fishing, snorkelling, boat trips and visiting local eco-schools. I really enjoyed the underwater field trip because I like to see the different creatures you can see in different countries. It was so cold that each of us had to wear two wetsuits, hoods gloves and boots. On the second day the theme was water. Ashilya from Mauritius who was 13 gave an interesting presentation about recycling rainwater. We also had a presentation by a marine artist called Steve Wyland. He had two massive paintings. One was of a whale in the sea and the other one was of animals in fresh water.
He got many of us to paint different marine animals around the whale. The mural was going to go up at the Beijing Olympics. I thought that this was a great idea! Lily and I painted a turtle and Laura painted an otter. At the end of the week we made commitments to take back to our own countries. There were some for each theme. For ‘water’ some of them were re-use water, use cold water whenever possible instead of heated water, take shorter showers and reduce waste water.
Now we are back we are trying create change. We have presented to different groups of young and old people. We are hoping to get everybody to help us keep our commitments. It’s something everyone can help with- not just for us but also for the planet! Help us create change- its necessary for the future of mankind!
By Lizzie Mason, Age 13
I have just got the gold award – just before my 8th birthday!
To do this I had to do or go to 8 things for each stage (bronze, silver & gold) - you get a sticker for each award. So to get silver you have to do a total of 16 different things. When I got my gold award I had completed 24 different things.
Some of the award activities are from your local group : I go to Pocklington and Market Weighton group and some of the things are from those meetings. We’ve helped at a local reserve – there was a picture of me cleaning out the nest boxes – and stream dipped in the Monkey run at Market Weighton. My dad took a photo and I wrote a bit about what happened. Others are ones that you have done personally, like planting trees at my grannys ( a photo and some writing showed what I did) and some were pictures – like the leaf picture using leaves from an autumn walk. The wildlife magazine gives you lots of ideas, from Buzz.
When you have completed some work, you must either give it to your group leader or Buzz together with your award chart – they can then complete it and add a star sticker. I found it lots of fun and very interesting. I am now going to try and complete the next award.
I hope that you want to try too.
Jessica, aged 7.