Blake Inspire programme
By Flynn Wilson | Posted: Tuesday October 10, 2023
My name is Flynn Wilson and I was recently one of the delegates for Blake Inspire 2023.
Blake is a non-profit organisation that was established in 2004 to continue Sir Peter Blake's legacy with nature conservation, environmental awareness, and sustainable practices with a focus on the marine environment.
Blake Inspire is just a part of the Blake organisation that encourages passionate secondary school students from all over Aotearoa to come together, learn, and work towards making New Zealand a better, more sustainable, more environmentally aware nation. The Blake Inspire Programme consisted of 37 students from all over the country.
I enjoyed my time during the programme. The amazing staff were ready and willing to share their knowledge and passion, and the students taking part were curious, and enthusiastic to make a change! What surprised me was how like-minded these students were, and how they were all very dedicated to finding new solutions to environmental issues that are taking place in our day-to-day lives.
My days at Blake were really fun and engaging! Each morning we had a debrief about the day's topics, such as Biodiversity, Corporate Sustainability, and Marine and freshwater environments. We then embarked on exciting activities around Auckland, including visits to the Goat Island Marine Discovery Centre, the Tāwharanui Open Sanctuary, the Auckland Airport Tarmac, the Pourewa Gardens, the Auckland Domain, and Campbells Bay where we got to have hands-on experiences with businesses and local organisations and look at how they are reducing their impact on the environment. Our evenings were just as enriching, featuring presentations where we discussed what happened throughout the day, policy simulations, and lessons on Mātauranga Māori.
One of the aims of the programme was to create an action plan. This is where we created a plan based on what we learnt in the programme, to implement those ideas within our school and/or region. Many of the action plans brought up were really good and had some huge potential to make progress towards our impact on our environment. My action plan was to create an online network for past, present, and future Blake delegates to join, so we can share information about our plans. What we did, how we did it, any issues that arose, before and after shots, etc. This would then allow delegates from around New Zealand to use and share information, knowledge, and action plans with the hope that we could spread the area of impact that these plans had.
Overall I enjoyed my time at Blake, and I'm looking forward to continuing my journey within this field.
In Otago Boys' fashion, I would like to finish with a quote from the final log entry from Sir Peter Blake. “We want to restart people caring for the environment… through adventure, through participation, through education, and through enjoyment.”
More information about Blake New Zealand:
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