Toyota Kiwi Guardians celebrates claim of 50,000th medal

Toyota Kiwi Guardians, a partnership between the New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) and Toyota New Zealand has marked an historic milestone, with the claiming of the programme’s 50,000th medal.

Toyota Kiwi Guardians aims to inspire tomorrow’s leaders to protect New Zealand’s land and its birds and animals. The programme highlights family-friendly adventures and activities that support children to get outdoors, take risks, and look after nature.

Since Toyota Kiwi Guardians’ launch in 2016, 10s of thousands of young conservationists have criss-crossed New Zealand, visiting nature reserves and coastlines, and learning about the outdoors. Each Toyota Kiwi Guardians adventure site or home-based activity has a unique medal assigned to it, with over 120 to collect.

Seven-year old Anya from Auckland was the lucky 50,000th medal winner with her visit to Auckland Botanic Gardens in October.

Anshu, Anya’s mum, said Toyota Kiwi Guardians is great way for children to explore the outdoors commenting "we absolutely love Toyota Kiwi Guardians. Anything that keeps the kids away from screens and outdoors in nature is a true blessing!

“The feeling of pride when they get their medals in the post is amazing. I would recommend all kids to sign up for this fantastic programme by DOC and Toyota. Lots of fun family adventures for everyone and amazing places to see."

Many New Zealand children have earned more than one medal. To recognise this Toyota Kiwi Guardians has also awarded a special prize to the Kiwi Guardian with the most medals. This was won by nine-year-old Samson from Wellington, who has claimed an amazing 111 medals, a huge achievement!

Toyota Kiwi Guardian locations are spread from Northland to Stewart Island and the programme team were keen to acknowledge some families’ dedication to hunting out the more far-flung locations.

Anita Anderson, DOC’s Outreach and Education Manager, was surprised to discover that not one but four Kiwi children have been to the furthest north and furthest south Toyota Kiwi Guardians locations. These are Pukenui Forest, near Whangarei, and Ulva Island, off Stewart Island.

She advised “there could be only one winner, so we drew names out of a hat and six-year-old Linus from Wellington was declared the winner.”

Anya, Samson and Linus, were all awarded a special commemorative medal as well as a prize pack including an amazing Wellington nature experience and Toyota Kiwi Guardians hats, bags and sweatshirts.   

Andrew Davis, Toyota New Zealand’s General Manager of Marketing, said the Toyota Kiwi Guardians programme had been hugely successful in getting New Zealand children and their families more involved in conservation activities from Northland to Stewart Island.

Davis noted “Toyota Kiwi Guardians has been a way of embedding conservation and sustainability into the minds of children and families at a really important stage in kids’ development.”

For more information go to www.kiwiguardians.co.nz

Image: Toyota Kiwi Guardians 50000th medal winner, Anya and her family, DOC staff and Auckland Botanical Gardens staff