Finalists for $US100,000 prize thrilled
NEVER sell yourself short.
It is a valuable lesson that a group of Otago Girls’ High School pupils learnt recently when they applied for the prestigious international Zayed Sustainability Prize, worth $US100,000 ($NZ155,000).
Established in 2008, the prize was created to honour the legacy of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founding father of the United Arab Emirates, and his pioneering commitment to global sustainability and humanitarian development.
Otago Girls’ High School Enviroschools representative Brynn McBurney said the school applied for one of the six $US100,000 prizes which are awarded in categories, including high schools, health and infrastructure.
She was surprised when the school was recently selected as one of three finalists in the Global High Schools’ category within the East Asia and Pacific region.
‘‘I think it’s amazing for us to even be considered for this award, because when we entered, originally we thought: ‘This is a bit funny, and surely when they look at our application, they’ll say it’s not good enough’.
‘‘But then we got selected.’’ She said a small group of pupils and staff would now attend the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week and Zayed Sustainability Prize Award Ceremony in the UAE early next year, where they would find out if they had won.
‘‘It’s pretty exciting.
‘‘To be invited to Abu Dhabi and meet all of these other extraordinary people who are working on great projects, and be considered amongst them as finalists, is actually amazing.’’
Brynn said the school was actively involved in environmental and sustainability projects in the community, including the Healthy Harbour Watch, Tomahawk Lagoon project and the Dunedin Town Belt Kaitiaki.
For its work, the school was awarded a GreenGold Enviroschools status in 2017.
If the school did win the $US100,000 prize, it would be put towards establishing a sustainability hub to educate pupils at Otago Girls’ High School and other schools and community organisations, about sustainable practices.
‘‘We’re hoping to get things like solar panels, a wind turbine and kinetic floor tiles that generate electricity when you walk over them.
‘‘They’ll be plugged into the school’s power supply and the statistics and information that we gather from these technologies can be displayed to the students to show them the kind of impact they are having on the environment and the school’s electricity consumption.’’