Horowhenua College Envirogroup leaders, Ashlee West and Liam Roach
Green Week 2025 was a new initiative led by Horowhenua College Envirogroup leaders, Ashlee West and Liam Roach. The idea came about from a “protect my backyard” portfolio that the Year 9 students engaged in a couple of years ago. They believed that it would get a lot of buy-in from teachers and students alike, and they sure did! – with 1,700 students from 10 schools taking part.
Green week was a week-long competition open to all Enviroschools in the Horizons (Manawatū-Whanganui) region. Liam and Ashlee came up with a range of activities suitable for students from primary to secondary age, with a points system for each activity that generated some healthy competition!
Schools shared evidence of activities completed during Green Week
A bingo card with 25 mystery activities was to be completed in the week, however it was only issued to participating schools the night before Green Week started so there could be no pre-planning. Different activities earned different points. Students submitted photos, reels, social media posts and emails as evidence of tauira/kaiako/their community taking action. Ashlee and Liam documented all of this, awarding points, tallying results, creating special prizes and then also judging the competition.
Whanganui Intermediate School students with their Bingo Cards
The end of Green Week was celebrated with a well-attended, hugely successful and student-led awards ceremony at Horowhenua College. There were a number of category awards, individual student awards, and each participating student received a certificate.
RESULTS:
Second place winners Levin School
Top 3 placings:
1st – St Johns Hill School – $1,000, vouchers and cash (see banner photo)
2nd – Levin School – $500 – vouchers and cash
3rd – Pongaroa School – $200 – vouchers
Category winners: (The judges favourite entry from each of the five categories)
- Waste Reduction – Weber School
- Energy and Water Conservation – Horowhenua College
- The Outdoors – Levin School
- Advocacy & Awareness – Tawhero School
- Sustainability Focused Projects – Pongaroa School
Student Awards Spot Prizes: (students who went above and beyond in different ways)
- Leadership award – Ramneek Kamboj from Rangitikei College
- Rubbish Enthusiast award – Logan White from Levin North School
- Home Eco Warriors award – Cooper Halliwell and Flynn Halliwell from Weber School
- Sustainability Hero award – Liam Hillman-slow from Levin North School
- Recruiter award – Olivia Ward from Rangitikei College
Spot Prize for students from Weber School
The organisation and motivation shown by the two empowered students Ashlee and Liam, to plan the event, design the logo and poster, create the social media reels and communicate with the community and sponsors was very impressive, and a huge amount of mahi.
And whats more, Green Week 2026 is already being planned with Ashlee taking the lead – Liam is off to university!
The students were very grateful for the support of Horowhenua College, Horizons Regional Council, Serena Cootes and David McMillan from Horowhenua District Council, and all the other sponsors and the Horowhenua community.
*Ashlee has since presented at the Enviroschools Secondary Zoom Hui about the programme and both students were featured on the Environment Network Manawatū webpage.
Lots of fun, smiles and great actions taking place during Green Week 2025
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