Having been jamming together for just over a year, it was time to have a good proper reflection about what we, Wanaka’s Young Change Makers, have achieved and what steps we want to take next during  the course of the next few months to be even more epic than we already are. Winter is coming and we need some good solid actions that will not only make us feel warm inside but also fairly toasty on the outside, it’s gonna get real cold, real soon.

I arranged to be available armed with flip charts, post its and pens. A few ideas of my own and more importantly some skills to help us capture our ideas and start to formulate a plan, a real good one too, we need one right now.

Megan was the first to join my sunny picnic table, in fact she was there before me, so really, it’s her sunny picnic table open to everyone. We were approached many times by inquisitive minds. After sitting and being visited, by a few different people, we decided to mark our space with a sign, explaining to those inquiring minds that we were busy hatching epic ideas. Soon enough we were joined by Amber and Blake who thankfully saw the benefit to the ways of our thinking. In less than 2 hours we’ve doubled our thinking capacity. The ideas are soon blossoming and starting to form natural groups. Exciting times!

Essentially we discovered that we need to increase our numbers and have some really fun projects to do. Since winter is coming and we were thinking about feeding ourselves, we thought that perhaps we could set up a winter soup kitchen at the farmers market for a few weeks. We could connect up with some great chefs, learn to cook and then share our produce with our community. There are loads of young snowboarders and skiers in Wanaka we’re pretty sure they at least would relish a cup of our soup on a cold Thursday evening. If we get it right and we might even be able to raise some money for our efforts and support the next idea. Woooo hoooo!

We’re also passionate about setting up a worm farm at MAC, all we need to do is secure some funds to make the initial purchases; worms, a farm, buckets & advertising material. This is a fantastic project to allow both Wanaka’s Young Change Makers and Team Green to work together. Some of our members are in both, some in one but not the other. We jam at different times to suit different people and hopefully through this project we can support each other more integrating our actions for maximum behaviour change.

The first Tuesday of term 2 was to be our launch night. The four of us were going to be thinking logos and how we could promote ourselves. We were also going to present our ideas about these uber epic plans we have to everyone else. Let’s see if we can convince everyone else to join us. We’re stepping up and we want some company.

The surprise I had in reserve was that we had been given $420 from donations given during the Earth Day celebrations, enough to get the worm farms off the ground and we had a time capsule to bury (Thank you so much Amber, Anika, Danny and all the other epic people involved in making Earth Day go off). Visitors to the eco festival were invited to write down a pledge for the next year and we had been asked if we could bury the glass jar to be dug up and read out in just under 12 months time as part of Earth Day 2012.

The subject of how we feed ourselves was also discussed. We have some money that we raised at the A&P show from the fishing game, it was up to us to figure out our best spend. To start the ball rolling we chose a very tasty but unhealthy chips and crackers. As we ate them we discussed the merits of this as food. Was it tasty? Was it good for us? Did it come from a long way away? Was it value? 10 points for each attribute to give a total score. Each week we try a different type of food from different places and build up some knowledge about the food we eat. RAD! The chips and crackers are sitting at 19 / 40……

With the pledges buried in a top secret location, plans hatched further, jobs assigned, future meetings arranged it was time to disperse and yet again another surprise. I ended up talking to Maxine from the Venue and 63b and it would seem that they may be able to help solve our commercial kitchen headache for the soup kitchen and something else really really exciting, but I’m keeping that secret for now…..I hope you enjoy the photos, and keep an eye out for us, we’re gonna be up to some epic actions in the coming weeks and months.