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Meet our 2021 Leaders: Environmental/Kaitiakitanga Prefects

In this series of articles, we get to know our 2021 prefect team better, and learn about their goals, backgrounds and roles. Today we meet Sean Hancock and Michiko Pritchard, our Kaitiakitanga Prefects.

Their roles as the environmental prefects are to raise awareness around the school about the impacts of human beings on the environment.

Sean and Michiko are both very pleased to be given this role and hope that they can use it to make a difference in the school. They look forward to promoting important ideas about the environment, and Sean “wishes to promote ocean health within his environment team here at Sancta Maria.” Michiko looks forward to helping the school environment and wants to use her role to “give back to the school.”

Sean Hancock

Sean’s hobbies include sailing, scuba diving, tramping, windsurfing and photography. When at school he enjoys History and Photography. He has a great passion for the ocean and says that he will look forward to “spending more time in the ocean and outdoors with my peers this year and promoting ocean health and environmental sustainability within Sancta Maria College.”

Sean is the Environmental team leader, and he enjoys playing music. He plays the drums, bass guitar and the guitar. Sean has goals for himself to “grow as a leader and to leave Sancta Maria College with a more sustainable, easier, and cleaner environment then when I started here in 2015.”

Michiko Pritchard

Michiko enjoys reading, drawing, and watching football and some of her favourite subjects include Biology and Classics. This year she is hoping to establish “closer bonds with her peers in their final year, and hopefully closer relationships between the year levels.”

Michiko’s goals for the school this year is to improve our rubbish situation throughout the school. She plans to raise awareness among the year levels about our rubbish and hopefully by the end of the year the amount of rubbish the school is producing is reduced. She also is hoping to learn more about environmental issues and to do her part for the school.

Both Sean and Michiko have great plans for the future of our school and its sustainability. With a new rubbish program already in place for some of the school they hope to grow from there. They hope to “promote ocean health and environmental sustainability within Sancta Maria College as people underestimate how the environment affects our day to day lives in New Zealand.” Another goal they have set for themselves as prefects of 2021 is to educate people about the environment and to be role models to younger students and to be of examples to them on how to care for the environment.

Sean and Michiko leave us with some advice to all the students at Sancta Maria. Sean advises us to get stuck into school life and that there are a lot of opportunities around school to get involved with such as music, sport enviro. Michiko encourages everyone who is looking into prefect roles especially the year twelves to go for it.

“No one’s too cool to be of service to others and you can get a lot back from it as well.” Sean says.

And finally, they leave us with something exciting to look forward to “Sancta Maria College can look forward to be a cleaner, more sustainable college system that is more beneficial to the environment

around us. And look forward to a more educational and hands-on approach to the natural world around us and how we can look after it better in our day to day lives.”

We congratulate Sean and Michiko for receiving the roles of the Environmental Prefects and look forward to all of the changes that they will make within the community about improving the environment. We wish them all the best for their final year of school and for university.

Maia Tay-Morrison