News and Views

In the last weekend of July, our UNESCO Aotearoa Youth Leaders joined three National Commission scholarship recipients, as well as future-focused people from around New Zealand (and a global virtual audience) at Festival for the Future. The National Commission was involved in the Festival in a variety of ways including as a bronze sponsor; providing three youth scholarships to the Festival; a booth in the marketplace run by our UNESCO Aotearoa Youth Leaders; and hosting a workshop to improve awareness of the UN Decade of Ocean Science.

26 July is International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem! Mangrove ecosystems provide benefits and services that are essential for life. From advancing food security, sustaining fisheries and forest products and offering protection from storms, tsunamis and sea level rise to preventing shoreline erosion, regulating coastal water quality and providing habitats for endangered marine species -- the list is long on the importance of mangrove ecosystems

Discover what has kept us busy in June and July. Find out what has been happening in our Creative Cities Network. Learn more about our priority areas and read stories about some of our grant recipients. Plus meet some of our UNESCO Aotearoa Youth Leaders.

Our website has had a complete make-over, resulting in a fresh, modern look and design with Aotearoa New Zealand at its heart. It includes all our most popular content from our old site, presented in a new easy-to-navigate layout.

Matariki plays a significant role in Māori culture in signifying the start of the New Year and for plantings to begin. UNESCO Aotearoa Youth Leader Blair Kapa-Peters and Culture Commissioner Dr Dan Hikuroa share their experience and knowledge of Matariki.

In 2020 as a result of the pandemic we refocused our Minor Grant fund to support projects that responded to COVID-19 to enable us to best support the needs of our community.
We supported 16 projects in total in 2020 including Te Rito Toi - which has been usually successful with more than 250,000 views and receiving international recognition from UNESCO and the OECD. Te Rito Toi is an online resource developed to support teachers as they returned to the classroom post lockdown, it uses the arts to manage the stories, questions and issues children bring to the classroom after trauma or crisis.