As a result, students at Otago Girls’ High School rallied together to hopefully raise $7500 for World Vision.
Yesterday, 150 students began getting up and walking for between five and 10 minutes every hour as part of the World Vision 40 Hour Challenge.
Year 13 student and organiser Lily Sikora, 18, said this year all the money raised would be going towards the Solomon Islands.
She said they had been badly affected by climate change, and it was affecting all of their food crops.
‘‘This is going to give them training to help to kind of adapt to the climate issues there.’’
Lily, as well as the rest of the school council, went along to the World Vision council about two weeks ago where they were told about the Solomon Islands.
They left feeling ‘‘really inspired’’ to do something, and to make it bigger and better than previous years.
‘‘We needed to up our game — last year we had 24 participants and raised about $2000. And this year we said ‘no, we can do better’.’’
They decided they needed to do the challenge together, hold each other accountable, and motivate one another.
The group brainstormed, came up with the idea of walking, and raised $6000 before they began.
Lily said she hoped the gold coin donation mufti day they were holding today would make up at least $1000 of the shortfall.
Between every class period, at lunch, and at interval, pupils were doing circuits around a track which involved hurdles, jumps and walking.
They also did at least 30 minutes of walking at home.
‘‘Being able to do it at school with your friends, it’s not a huge commitment. It’s really awesome seeing people out here doing it.
‘‘This is still enough to make an impact and kind of show, ‘hey, we’re doing something’ without it being this huge onerous thing for people.’’
