Project TANE - About Us

Project TANE

About Us

The project TANE Team are six students who live and go to school in the brand new sub-division of Flatbush in New Zealand's large and sprawling Manakau City, in the greater Auckland area.

At the centre of the community stands our school, Mission Heights Junior College which opened on 4th of February, 2009.

There are many students in our school from overseas. As a result they bring their own cultural treasures but often have little knowledge of the beautiful features of our New-Zealand landscape which have made us what we are as New Zealanders with a love of nature and a “can do” approach to adventure.

MHJC is a wonderful school, with amazing buildings and a high tech 21st century educational vision, where learning is designed to be “authentic, relevant and engaging”. But there are down sides to being a new school, particularly one with a strong focus on environmental sustainability. The school has solar panels, a wind turbine, eco- friendly furniture and furnishings, a worm farm and a recycling programme which includes no rubbish bins. And yet in contrast there are few established plants and trees on a site that will look barren for some years to come. The school land, which used to be a forest, fields and home to one of New-Zealand's noted surgeons, now has only a small portion of native bush, identified by the Manukau City Council as of “high heritage value” left on one of it's boundaries.

Our school stands majestically at the heart of our new community but in stark contrast, the remaining bush, a green oasis in a desert of newly established houses, is left uncared for, inaccessible and dangerous with its original track made by a neighbour and former land owner now long over-grown, untended and unused.

Our Challenge

Because MHJC is a newly established school with few established trees, how might we create an authentic learning environment in our neighboring bush reserve so that our generation will learn to value New-Zealand's native treasures in an exciting natural environment?