Kaitiakitanga

Kaitiakitanga Program and Network
Te Whaiti Nui-a-Toi children
guard and share Whirinaki,
their culture, language and values

1.3.1 Weatherstation, Energy, Whare Research Project

Description: " Weatherstation to reseach global warming, energy efficiency and healthy housing"

The initial idea for this project came from Meriana Taputu when she was took a group for a walk to the waterfall. She told of how our ancestors Te Marangaranga developed houses that were built well into the ground (a well drained well insulated pumice base). They lined this and built the low whare with Ponga logs (soft and a very good insulator) then put Totara bark over the roof as shingles. She has suggested to DOC that these be built on the river flat below the track to give visitors a richer visit.

We think that these houses would have been very energy efficient, warm in winter and cool in summer, with little need for fires and heating. We are looking at the possibility of building one at our school as an experiment that could prove how much our ancestors knew about science.

We have also been told that even around 1950, some of our old people living near the marae slept in small sleeping whare shaped like small tramping tents on a platform about 800mm off the ground. We are going to ask some of our older community members about how these were made, as we think these too may have been very energy efficient, being above the ground frost level and probably relying totally on body heat as there was then no electricity in the valley.

This project kicked into life in March 2008 when we were able to buy an electronic weather station some solar panels and other experimental equipment, with Koha given by organisations using the Tipu Ake Organic Leadership Model that our community shares.

ERECTING OUR WEATHER MONITORING / SUSTAINABLE ENERGY POLE AND EQUIPMENT:

Glueing ducting and threading the cable into it to get the power from our solar cell
(It took a bit of smart thinking and teamwork to find our how to thread 25 metres of cable into a small diameter duct (pipe)

Leveling the support posts, then lifting the pole into position
(The pole is hinged as we need to get access often - we have a safety rope to stop it falling back on us while lifting)

A later physics project on seesaws, levers, pulleys, forces and gravity will design a winch so just one person can raise and lower it safely. We scored a hand winch off trademe to get do this.

We have also nailed small ribbons to the pole so that we can observe air flows and turbulence around the it and equipment.

The Solar panel to power all / the outdoor temperature, humidity, ground temperature and rainfall sensors
(This is from BP Solar - the same technology BP now uses for solar arrays on top of their petrol station forecourts)

The wind and solar radiation sensors - The official height for wind measurement is 9.15 metres x 39.37/12=30 Feet)
(these sensors need no wires: they communicate by wireless links to the weather recorder unit in our classroom)

All gathering around for karakia to bless the pole, our work and the learning that we will get from this project.

We don't get too many direct lightning strikes in our valley as they are attracted first by our mountain Tuwatawata which safely conducts them to ground though its core. In that way it is a Kaitiaki (Guardian) over the place we live in; that is why it is bald at it's top. Just to be safe, we fitted a lightning arrester rod at the top of our pole which conducts down a thick 35mm2 copper cable to a ground mat made of exposed copper underground cable and two earthing rods. In a way it too becomes a local kaitiaki; guarding our, equipment, classrooms and we students .

The power controller: including provision for a 10 watt solar panel and four wind turbine inputs charging a 7.2 Ampere-hour sealed lead acid battery. It provides outputs for the weather station display, the data laptop, a 230 volt 50 watt mains invertor, a nicad batter charger (for sensor power) and an adjustable electronic lab bench power supply for our experimental work.

The complete installation including the iROX weather display and the laptop that stores and processes data from it. This means that all classes will be able to access this historical weather information via our school intranet.

As well as measuring wind speed, wind direction, UV radiation, rainfall, internal temperature / humidity, external temperature and humidity, and ground temperature, the iRox weather station can also collect, monitor and record additional wireless sensor inputs for other experiments.

The IROX unit stores up to 3300 data sets (eg for 5 minute recoerding rate (275 hours eg 11.5 days) so that laptop does not need to be permanently on line. Our 10 watt Solar panel cannot permanently power the laptop, so it must be programmed to power down into sleep mode and wake up for a minute or so every hour to gather the readings and a valley webcam image then send them off to the Whirinaki website so all in the world can learn about our weather. When we get this going (next semester), our school will become the "Ngati Whare Metrological Service" !!

The readinngs we collect are:

The data set  is recorded by the station and collected to a text file under the RECORDS folder in the weatherstation program folder

Year
Weekday
Month
Date
Hour
Minute

Internal Temperature (degC)   (Permanently monitoring our senior classroom)
Internal Relative Humidity (%)

Ch1 sensor – External Temperature (In sun sheltered box on post 1.2 m high)
                   – External Humidity

Ch2 sensor – Experiment temperature  ( portable wireless unit for other whare)
-  Experiment humidity

Ch3 sensor – Spare Experiment Temperature (future portable unit)
-  Spare Relative Humidity

Ch4 sensor – Soil Temperature (uses a remote temperature sensor buried 300mm)
                  -   
Ch5 sensor –  Black body Temperature Sensor ( Uses a remote temperature sensor measuring a black plate in a glass bottle - Comparing this with outside temperature allows us to monitor heat radiation from the sun by day and by the earth at night. This all about Global Warming mechanisms and very usefull for solar energy studies. The night-time reading also allows us to assess the amount of night cloud cover and thus together with temperature and humidity readings to assess possible frost danger next morning and how it may effect our crops)

UV Radiation Level Index sensor (UVI)  ( Used to monitor sunburn / skin cancer danger factors and changes in the ozone hole due to fluorocarbons etc)

Barometric Pressure (hpa)

Weather forecast (derived from Barometric Pressure changes etc)
Windchill factor (degC) effect of wind and temperature on body cooling (Hypothermia dangers)

Wind Gust   (Km/hr)           (Useful information to do studies on Wind Energy potential)   
Wind Direction (degrees)

Rainfall count
One hour rainfall
Rain last 24 hours
Rain Yesterday
Rain last week
Rain last month

UV Daily
UV Weekly

LEARNING TO APPLY WIND TURBINES

Our first prototype wind turbine and the one we will keep to use as a reference to check the performance of all others we build or experiment with. We will trial next a two bladed turbine with more lift and less drag hoping for a tip speed of around 5-10 times that of the wind. That will requires us to learn about and experiment with aerodynamics. Each is cabled into our classroom so we can record the voltage and power they generate.

One of our design objectives is to use wind turbines on the mountain-top repeaters that get broadband access to our remote schools and communities, so that we do not lose contact with the world over periods when there is no sun for the solar panels. This requires very robust turbine designs that operate in very high wind speed conditions where most conventional turbines are feathered or braked to prevent over speeding and blowing themselves apart. Already we have had some mechanical failures so we are are learning about the power of Tawhirimatea

Our first Savonius style horizontal turbine. It relies on wind drag to turn it, so it operates at a slow speed and gives plenty of torque (turning power). It accepts wind from any direction. It has an alternator at each end so we can double the voltage output to account for its slower speed.

Next we will build a Darrieus one (The example above is a prototype Turby design from Delft University) which relies more on aero foil lift so it will spin much faster.

We are building a number of wind turbines around a 24 volt brushless axial computer fan which we converted to become a generator (or more correctly an alternator as it provides Alternating Current - AC, not Direct Current - DC). We split the two windings and bring both ends of each out from the alternator. In the junction box we join both winding in series to double the AC voltage we pass to a bridge rectifier to convert this to DC and hopefully to help charge our battery.

The motor - generator set that we use to help better understand our alternator characteristics and design our wind turbines.

LEARNING ABOUT SOLAR ENERGY INSULATION AND SAVING POWER

Our insulated solar energy box has internal heating lamps, a small circulating fan, baffles to direct the air, a larger extractor fan that automatically runs if the temperature exceeds a safe limit. The remote wireless sensor
allows our i-ROX weather station to be the instrumentation we need to monitor and record the results of our experiments over 24 hours every day.

A black plate inside can be used to absorb the suns rays. By measuring the temperature rise we work out how much energy the sun gives out and we can compare that with the electrical power given out by a solar panel of the same area to estimate its conversion efficiency. The guys at National Glass in Rotorua helped us double glaze the front cover to help prevent heat loss. Bricks or heavy stones inside the box allow us to store heat when the sun is out then release it later. By replacing the front panel with other building construction materials / we estimate their thermal losses.

Here Terenui who hopes to become an engineer (helped by Tumanako who did the mechanical work) is wiring up the control panel for this unit as a project over the school holidays

(Our first initial experiment showed that putting 20 watts of lamp heat into an empty box the internal temperature rose to around 10 degrees C above the outside temperature. Then with the lamps off and the the black absorber plate facing the afternoon winter sun, the internal temperature rose to more than 50 degrees C while the outside temperature was less than 20 degrees).

Looking at the thermal resistance values for 30mm Polystyrene (approx R=.75 ) at http://www.plastics.org.nz/page.asp?id=468 it seems that much of the heat loss /gain we saw could be through the box walls so we will need to add another 100mm to bring the R value to around 3. That way most of the loss will be through the front panel

refer to the excellent study on Housing NZ homes at http://www.physics.otago.ac.nz/eman/documents/Main%20presentation%20Wellington%202007.pdf which shows single glazing around R =0.15 , double glazing R = 0.26, curtains R=0.2 - 0.3, un insulated timber walls around 0.15 and well insulated walls and ceilings around R=3)

USING PICAXE MICROCONTROLLERS IN OUR PROJECTS

We are starting to use the Revolution Education PICAXE 14m microcontrollers www.picaxe.co.uk for our Electronics laboratory bench. These we can program to control things including wind turbines, solar electricity panels, charging systems etc.

We use the Picaxe 14M chip fitted on the 14m Prototyping Board.

We have this built into a laboratory prototyping unit which has the following functions:

Input 0 - a 0-5 v analogue input terminals (with variable potentiometer we can switch in as a test input) / interrupt*

Input 1 - digital with test switch [up =1 (digital temp sensor 1), middle = terminal input, down = 0 / interrupt*]

Input 2 - digital with test switch [up =1 (digital temp sensor 2), middle = terminal input (PWM), down = 0 / interrupt]

Input 3 - digital with test switch [up=1 (to infrared remote sensor), middle = terminal input, down=1 sec clock i/p)]

input 4 - 0-5 volt analogue input with test switch [up=1, middle (0-25v ext terminal input), down=0 (light detector)]

note: A rotary switch allows the interrupt line to be connected to inputs 0, 1, 2. this can be either driven by the alarm pulse 5 (seconds) at the preset alarm time / duration from the Real time clock, or alternatively a one second signal pulsing signal.
Inputs 0-4 can also operate as counters up to 50 kHz (pulses per second) using the count command Input 2 can be used as a PWM 2 ( Pulse width modulation) output using the pwmout command

Output 0 - serial output to PC (and also to LCD 16 x 2 display module)

Output 1 - LED lamp and darlington pull down driver (swithes to 0 v when output is on)

Output 2 - LED lamp and darlington pull down driver (also drives Piezo sounder - speaker)

Output 3 - LED lamp and Mosfet high power pull up driver (switches to +12v when output on)

Output 4 - LED lamp and Mosfet high power pull down driver (switches to 0v volt when output is on)

Output 5 - LED lamp and isolated relay outputs

notes: inputs 0-2 and outputs 3-5 form Port C and can be each reconfigured using the let dirsc command to be either inputs or outputs. That gives up to three more ADC input channels and/or four more hpwm (Pulse Width Modulation) outputs (able to provide analogue outputs)

 

The unit is powered off our Solar system 12 volt battery. The LED indicator ligts and displays can be switched off to save power when not needed. It can also be switched to run off an internal battery ( 3 x AAA cells) so it can be a portable unit.

We can input connect sensors ( two inputs go digital temperature probes - shown) like switches light detectors, position potentiometers etc. The outputs cabn be used to drive lights, motors etc.

The serial digital display panel on the front allows us to output information and readings. We also have a piezo sounder

This module also includes a real time clock chip that can display time and date. (This needs a little program here to set it). This modules also provides a one second flashing output and an alarm that we can program to produce a 5 second pulse - either at a specified time or after a specified period. Either of these can be switched into input 0, 1 or 2 to provide an input that will interrupt the controller and cause it to do something specific.

By connected it to a PC via a serial port we use the Picaxe Programming Editor (downloadable here for free) in it to write a program that reads the Picaxe inputs, processes the information and drives its outputs in a very flexible way. There is also a debug command which allows it to send information back to the PC to let us know what is going on inside it.

You can find a demonstration program here which reads the two temperature inputs and buzzes if they are above a preset limit. It also flashes the outputs LED's. It plays a song after it gets an interrupt input from the external clock after a preset time (set at 2 minutes here) to remind us to take the temperature readings (say if we are doing a heat experiment with the energy box above).

Once programmed the PC can be disconnected and the picaxe just does its job, holding its program even if the power is switched off.

The first real picaxe project our level 6 class is thinking about is making a tracking solar panel that moves to always face the sun. See also what some South Taranaki Schools are doing using Picaxe and a NZ site with lots of links.

For more detailed information about our installation, check out our project design notes

Outcomes expected:

• We will learn learn about energy saving and how to use solar, wind and other reusable energy sources
• We will be able to learn across the curriculum using some practical examples
• This will help us understand and make "Statistics" and maths more real
• We will know much more about how our ancestors survived in this extreme climate
• We will learn a lot about energy efficient housing and the insulation properties of materials
• We will install a weather station and collect information about conditions and changes
• We will consider other local material like pumice that may be good for building environmentally friendly housing ( One of our whanau is already planning to use straw bale and mud brick construction for a new home)
• We will understand our ancestor's gardening knowledge ( eg planting by the moon / soil temperatures / frost etc )
  
  
• We will add to the experience of visitors in the forest /our area by adding this human / cultural component
• By physically working in the forest we will learn more about it
  

• We will share our learning as a resource for other schools; including those coming on field trips to our education camp.
• We will be taking a growing role as kaitiaki of the Whirinaki Rainforest; working in partnership with DOC and others.

Start Date: mid 2004 deferred to 2008
Expected Completion: mid 2008 but ongoing spin offs will come from this

Budget: Direct Costs not including labour;

Activity 1A. The weather station and other items has been purchased using Koha given to us: COMPLETED Apr 08

$674.20 Outside Inside NZ ltd - Weather Station IROX plus ground temperature /humidity sensors
$66.74 Bunnings - Timber, bolts etc to support the pole and mount these safely.

$60.87 DSE, Plastic Box, Bunnings - misc equipment to allow us to do solar and wind generation experiments.

$500.90 Jaycar - Solar panel, regulator, battery, cables, invertor to get our "Electrical lab" on renewable energy
$106.03 Bunnings, Mitre 10 Hammer HW - Conduit and solar panel mounting brackets
---------
$1408.74 expended for installation - April 2008

Thanks to Tipu Ake koha from The University of Auckland "Excelerator" Leadership Programme, Change Training Consultants, Andrew Coop (A Kiwi in London who enjoys Whirinaki), Andree Mathieu (Canada) and Strategic Expertise for helping make this happen. Also to the many organisations who freely give us the materials we need to do things

Activity 1B Complete our renewable energy lab and research pole installation TO BE COMPLETED May 08

$200 Materials to add a lightning arrestor cable up our pole, to protect us and equipment.
$.nil.. Design a small winch using local materials to help us safely raise and lower our pole
$80 Surplustronics - Motor generators to build small wind turbines of different types
$100 Bunnings - Cabling and other hardware needed to add these to our pole and monitor from inside
$ 20 Add the facility to recharge the ni-cad batteries used in weatherstation sensors using solar energy
$40 Jaycar electronics - Add converter to run a laptop off our battery and other misc equipment.

$440 Total - We are expecting other koha to cover this

Activity 2 Getting this on line on the web complete with a webcam PLANNED For Sept 08

$150 Weather display and weather display live software for PC may be required for another AUT student project we hope will help us with the skills we need in semester 2 2008

Activity 3 Build A Punga Whare at the Kura for experiments

Very little cost involved as almost all materials are local and readily available in the area. If we build it at the Kura its all about getting some parent volunteers with a truck and a few spades.

Activity 4 Build Punga Whare with visitor interpretation signs in Whirinaki Forest

We would need community help and DOC track barrows or someone with a helicopter to drop the logs onto the site for us, as we could not cut them from the surrounding bush.

Activity 5 Design and build a wind turbine / generator READY TO START FROM MAY 2008

We have found some small motors that we can convert into some experimental wind turbines. (horizontal type- conventional, and vertical types - Darrieus, Savonius, Teslar and other variants). We will mount them on our pole to check their performance, efficiency and learn to make them better. Down the track that may allow us to design a higher power one using an old F&P washing machine motor or similar to build it in our school Technology workshop.

Activity 6 Design and build a Mini Hydro station to power the new BBQ area at the Mangamate Waterfall campsite

This is just an idea to think about at this stage.

Activity 7 Carry out an audit on school Power usage: UNDERWAY

Our Power Bill was well over budget last year. That is money down the drain that we could have used for learning activities. We now have a clip-on ammeter that allows us to learn about the consumption of heaters and things around the school. Our Weather station has a remote sensor that we can put in the various buildings to record temperature/humidity and use it to see that we only using heating when it is absolutely needed.

Activity 9 Research building materials and passive solar heating

We have lab equipment in the form of a polystyrene fish box with a double glazed front and a black panel and wireless temperature sensor inside. This will let us trap the heat radiated by the sun (a bit like Maui did) and then find out what power needs to be given out by a lamp inside to get the same rise in temperature. That allows us to measure the heat in watts given out by the sun for every square meter surface area. That also allows us to estimate the efficiency of our solar panel. We can compare the loss through glass, double glazing and building materials. We think that we could maybe come up with a design for a solar storage heater that uses the sun's free energy to heat our school and homes instead of us having to buy power from the electricity company.

Nominal Project Leader: Meriana Taputu (kicked off the idea). Ex pupil Peter Goldsbury has helped our kura teachers get this established, now its over to the classes to take this over if and when it suits their learning programmes.

Project Team: Kura senior students as this will be a school design /science project

Main Tasks:

1. Research - Find out as much as we can find about:

Use of Ponga (and other materials) for Whare in Whirinaki in the past.
Energy efficient housing and using insulation to keep cold and heat out.
How much heat energy a typical family would give off to warm the whare.
The effect of temperature (cold) and Humidity (dampness) on human health
Weather and environmental monitoring (we must install own weather station for this project)
Solar and Wind Power - Could we do our project without paying for electricity etc.

2. Planning:

Plan the content of our project and get it approved at the Kura
Work out how we will write down what we learn and share it (Maybe produce a DVD to hand in)
Design the whare before we start building it

3. Getting Resources

Organise our parents and community to collect materials to build a small whare at the Kura.
Find people who could donate materials to make a solar/ wind power supply to heat / light our whare

3. Building:

Have a "Whare DIY" working bee
Build a power supply to generate the same amount of heat inside the whare that a family would.
Set up our computer weather station to record inside and outside temperatures etc in all weather / seasons. This has extra sensors to let us compare conditions inside our whare or other experiments

4. Experiments:

Do experiments to compare the heat loss through different materials eg Ponga, Raupo, wood, tin, glass
Look to see how we could improve living conditions in our whare with new designs (eg insulation or shading).
Monitor weather conditions in Whirinaki all year round - may be useful for gardening, nursery and and agriculture.

6. Documenting our project

Record all we do on video / the web and make a DVD resource to share with other schools and communities
Every student should keep a learning journal to record and share what we learn every week.
(these will be what we hand in for assessment).

Perhaps we could submit this as a entry in the NZ School Science Competition

8. Managing our Project

Make a plan to show when things are expected to be done and who will be doing what.
Make a budget at the start and keep a record of all the costs of doing this.
Hold regular korero to share what we are doing and learning
Think about how we could do this kind of project better next time.

Main Curriculum areas that could spin out from this programme:

Technology: Making sense of the Material world - design, construction, weaving mats, raupo walls etc, properties of materials
Science : Making sense of the physical world electricity, heat and energy, solar and wind power, global warming
making sense of planet earth: environmental - temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed and direction UV radiation, sunlight
Communications: verbal, written and multimedia communications
Mathematics: Geometry (design), Measurement, Algebra (Patterns and relationships), Statistics
ICT: - on line websites, information processing, multimedia production
Accounting: Budgeting and Costings
Health: effect of living conditions on our health

Some good web Resources:

Traditional Maori Housing:

Wharepuni - Remaining Tuhoe dwellings 1926 JSTOR -Firth Raymond Firth
Storehouses and Dwellings ( Elsdon Best) www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-BesMaor-c6-7.html

Weather Station:

Weather station hardware: www.weatherstation.co.nz iROX Pro x USB with wireless sensors
Weather station manual iROX http://www.weatherstation.co.nz/downloads/prox.pdf
Weather Capture software http://www3.suxeed.com/ost/ost-extranet.nsf/SoftwareView?OpenForm to allow a laptop to collect historical data - Provided with IROX .

Weather station Software: www.weather-display.com to store experimental /historical data ( NZ)
Live weather display software for the web: www.weather-display.com/wdlive.php to update on website

Weather station software (German) that works with iROX http://www.pc-wetterstation.de/enindex.html

Environmental monitoring; (We are on the Te Whaiti fault line)

Lightning strike counter: www.hobbyboards.com
Lightning Sensors http://www.stormwise.com/
Building your own seismograph station http://facstaff.gpc.edu/~pgore/seismic.htm#build

Jason - Operation Master Storms Learning resources www.jason.org/Public/Curriculum/Curriculum.aspx?pos=1

Renewable Energy and Efficiency

Meridian Energy Schoolgen Programme resources www.schoolgen.co.nz
US Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy - K12 Lesson plans www.eere.energy.gov/education/lessonplans/

Solar Energy

Solar design/ Panel direction considerations http://www.rpc.com.au/products/panels/pvmodules/pvmodules.htm
More design info from Rainbow Power Company http://www.rpc.com.au/products/services/examples.html

Wind turbines aerodynamics etc - (browse deeper into these sites for more interesting stuff

David Darling's Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy and Sustainable Living http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/W/AE_wind_turbine.html

Golf ball dimples and Drag - the theory of aerodynamic shapes and techniques http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/aerodynamics/q0215.shtml
Aerodynamic questions http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/aerodynamics/

Applied Aerodynamics - A digital Textbook http://www.desktopaero.com/appliedaero/preface/welcome.html

WIND DESIGN FOR KIDS with Miller - Danish Wind Energy Association http://www.windpower.org/en/kids/index.htm

WIND DESIGN GUIDED TOUR - Danish Wind Energy Association http://www.windpower.org/composite-85.htm

From Gas Turbines to Tornados http://www.memagazine.org/contents/current/webonly/webex403.html

Atmospheric Vortex Engine http://vortexengine.ca/index.shtml

Earth notes - London home wind power pilot project- http://www.earth.org.uk/wind-power-pilot-autumn-2007.html

Design notes for a wind turbine for power generation http://www.btinternet.com/~andrew.h.lohmann/WindMill.html

Diodes and Rectifier Circuits (Converting AC to DC) http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_3/chpt_3/4.html

Designing a wind generator using a Fisher And Paykel washing machine motor http://www.yourgreendream.com/diy_instructions.php

Wind Turbines - How they work http://www.solarnavigator.net/wind_turbines.htm

Build it Solar - Wind Power Projects http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Wind/wind.htm

Scoraig Wind - Hugh Piggott's collection of articles, links, and plans for building wind-powered electricity units;- http://www.scoraigwind.com/

A site full of DIY wind power experiments http://www.windstuffnow.com/main/

Teslar bladeless turbine theory - http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/dept/Courses/E-24/E-24Projects/Aquila/BladelessTurbine.htm

Savonius Wind Turbine News http://www.berezin.com/jeff/Savonius%20Wind%20%20Turbine%20News.htm

Darrieus Wind Turbine Theory http://www.windturbine-analysis.netfirms.com/

Darrieus performance in skewed flow on a rooftop (hilltop?) http://www.windenergy.citg.tudelft.nl/content/research/pdfs/jsee2003-sm.pdf

A Self Starting Darrieus Turbine - project report http://www.webalice.it/acecere48/finalreport.pdf

Wind Belt (micro power) technology (video)- uses aerolastic flutter - set to power the third world http://www.ecofriend.org/entry/shawn-frayne-disclosing-the-intricacies-behind-his-ingenious-windbelt/

Down Wind Turbine - DIY Construction http://www.windstuffnow.com/main/test_page.htm

Lightning protection resources http://www.windsun.com/Photovolaic_Systems/Lightning_Protection.htm

Resources for a School Electricity / Science Lab

All about Circuits and Electricity http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/l_sitemap.html

 

Issues Register:

Progress Log

NOTICES AND ACHIEVEMENTS:

Our gift to you - download our Free Whirinaki Wall Calendar

What Andree a sustainability writer discovered about Kaitiakitanga

The Maori Youth Hikoi to Bioneers Conference, San Francisco 16 Oct 08
VIDEO "Redesigning our Future" - Youth Forum with Michael Braungart

Check out our school's Energy Monitoring / Weatherstation project
WEMZ - The Whirinaki Ecological Restoration Zone - a project with DOC
DOC partnerships information kiosk, Mangamate, Sanctuary(proposed)

Take a photo tour through our valley see restoration work needed
Ready to start - our Whirinaki Centre, Nursary and Recycling Projects
Blocked - Our project to upgrade our water supply in Minginui Mar 07
Thanks TPK for facilitating Govt support for Minginui initiatives

Celebrate what our friends at Hokianga Harbourcare are doing
Our Network's Mycorestoration Research Project - Fungi and mushroom
Our Lopez friends help Raglan initiate an affordable housing program

Thanks MfE for a big toxin cleanup on our millsites - July 07
Blocked - our Community Digital Strategy - Whirinaki Interactive 12/06
Prince Andrew adopts our Kiwi, Princess Beatrice on Mokoia Is Mar 07
Our network on the Kiwi Youth Voice learning journey to US. Mar 07
Our network at Youth Voice Digital Earth Summit on Sustainbility Aug 06
We welcomed Hunter Lovins 7-9 July 06, VIDEO view NZ tour resources
Thanks Waikato University for help with broadband 05
Thanks Housing Corp, house painting and marae restoration teams
Go Tramping in Whirinaki. See Kaka, Kiwi, Weka, Robin, Blueduck
Report Living Organisation workshops. Tipu Ake presented worldwide 05
Report Hikoi to Indigenous Knowledges Conf , Well, NZ. June 05
Thanks to UNITEC Architecture Students for help with town plans 04
Report on Sustainable Resources Conf, Colorado 04
Report on PMI Global Forum, Los Angeles Tipu Ake paper 04
Report on Sharing Indigenous Wisdom Conf, Wisconsin, June 04
Int and local visitors attend Tipu Ake Retreat March 04 See report
MPs Horomia and Mallard open our new merged area school Jan 04
Trip to Whaingaroa Env Gp Raglan, Jan04 learnings, VIDEO view