It’s been a big year!

Community Wellbeing

Education

Healthy Ecosystems

Jobs For Nature

WAI Action Groups

Wānaka Water Project

As we start to wind down and get excited about the upcoming break, we wanted to say a huge thank you to all of our supporters, friends, stakeholders and partners like you who have helped us this year.

It’s been a big year for WAI Wānaka with many people behind the scenes working extremely hard to propel us forward. We hope you’ll enjoy hearing about a few of the highlights..

Some WAI Wānaka highlights of the year

  • Community Catchment Plan finalised and released into the wild. Check out the summary here
  • Received ‘Jobs for Nature’ Funding of $3m over three years, employing people to carry out activities on farm with environmental outcomes
  • Completed ‘Partnering to Plant’ project with Sustainable Business Network, employing 14 people for eight weeks:-  planted over 4,000 eco-sourced natives-  carried out weed control and plant maintenance-  worked across 23 sites-  with 10 community groups-  on 6 farms
  • Reached a total of 11,000 eco-sourced natives planted under the Wānaka Water Project with our partner Te Kākano Aotearoa Trust
  • Facilitated six farmer led Action Groups towards environmental goals
  • Worked with secondary and tertiary students from Wānaka, Hāwea and across Otago, on citizen science projects to keep inspiring our next generation of environmental enthusiasts

Of course we didn’t do all of this work alone. We have many partner organisations, stakeholders and individuals working alongside us to reach our goals and while we can’t name everyone individually, we’d like to say thank you to you all!

Give the gift of trees this Christmas!

 

The Wānaka Water Project is currently raising funds with Million Metres through our Cardrona Kaitiaki fundraiser to support planting over 5,000 native trees in the Cardrona Valley and surrounds in 2020/1. We’ve had some amazing support so far this year, thanks to many individuals who have donated and organisations such as Speight’s, Fonterra and the Rotary Club of Wanaka.

We’ve almost met our goal, but not quite! So, we’re reaching out to passionate people like you in our extended family to help us get there. 

If like us, you would like to give a different kind of gift this Christmas – one that gives back to our environment too – then we’d love for you to choose our Cardrona Kaitiaki project and gift the planting of native trees to friends, family or loved ones. For us last minute shoppers, thankfully there’s still time and it’s easy! Simply go to Million Metres gift trees page, pick a bundle of native trees of your choice and select Cardrona Kaitiaki, Otago as the place to plant them. You’ll receive a beautiful e-card to send to your loved one.

All proceeds will go towards trees that will be planted in the Cardrona Kaitiaki catchment and surrounding areas during the 2021 planting season.

From the whole team here at WAI Wānaka, we wish you the happiest of times this festive season and look forward to an even better 2021!