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17 June 2023, 14:49

I just wanted to update you on Walk for the Planet and invite you to an event we are collaborating with on Matariki Day, Friday, July 14 (see attached).
 
As most of you know, Walk for the Planet was founded back in 2008 following discussions at a Methodist Church event held in Queenstown.
The following year, thanks to a grant from the Methodist PAC fund, we initiated a hikoi from Rakiura (Stewart Island) to Wellington to raise awareness on climate change, in collaboration with numerous churches and environmental groups throughout the South Island.
 
Walk for the Planet was then revived in 2016 with another Methodist PAC grant and we initiated what became known as Seven Rivers, Seven Weeks. In 2017
we explored seven iconic Canterbury rivers with numerous environmental organisations, church groups, farmers, scientists and politicians and it became a feature film Seven Rivers Walking.
 
We revitalised Walk for the Planet in 2018 with a vision of: "health of people and the planet, and celebrating the cosmos". We received a third Methodist PAC grant and kept alive the popular Great Otakaro Avon River Walk, which was founded in 2012 by Mark Gibson. We also established the Kaiapoi River Wellbeing Walk in collaboration with the Kaiapoi Food Forest and to support Community Wellbeing North Canterbury (which local churches laid the foundations for in Kaiapoi in the 1970s and 1980s). Both are well established in the annual Christchurch Walking Festival.
We have also collaborated with an initiative based in east Christchurch called Flourish, where we made a financial contribution which allowed the group to gain a larger grant from the Rata Foundation to launch a social media campaign to raise awareness on climate change (ask Mark Gibson about that one).
 
We also began conversations with the Oxford Area School Observatory in 2019 about doing a collaboration. But with Covid this never really got off the ground - until this year when we began talking about a planet walk.
We also made a small financial contribution to help the observatory buy a meteor camera. Not only will this camera benefit the students, but it will feed into a global network tracking meteors - it is one of a number throughout New Zealand, erected at observatories and schools. It can track meteors and meteor showers and with several cameras at different locations they can locate where a meteor has landed. It will help scientists to learn more about space rocks and add to our knowledge.
You can read about the meteor camera on page 14 in the Thursday, June 15, edition of North Canterbury News - see: https://starmedia.kiwi/digital-editions/
 
Please join us in Oxford for the walk and to launch the meteor camera. There will be a plaque acknowledging the sponsors. As Walk for the Planet's funding came from the Methodist PAC fund, we asked that the Methodist Church of NZ be named.
Please feel free to spread the word.
 
The walk will be about 5km starting from the observatory in Bay Road, with eight turns to represent the eight planets. It is about 4.5 billion km from the sun to Neptune (about 5.9 billion km from the sun to Pluto).