Three students from John Paul College in Rotorua have been acknowledged nationally for making a video about protecting their local environment.
A three minute video by Eamon Walsh, David Harrison and Joshua Richardson about fighting for Rotorua’s water purity won the top prize in the Film, 15-18 years category in the 2016 Young Reporters for the Environment awards.
Their video was published on the New Zealand Herald website.
Category winners in the 2016 awards received a prize package including a camera, a day in the Herald newsroom and having their entry published on www.nzherald.co.nz.
Eamon, who is John Paul College’s environment captain, also won a NCEA scholarship in Drama in year 12.
He also won a Shakespeare monologue competition run by Speech NZ last year to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. The prize was $500.
Competitors were asked to provide a video recording of up to four minutes. Eamon played the role of Bottom, performing Bottom’s Dream from the play A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.
Judge Robin Payne said: “Eamon had an engaging relationship with his audience, a credible character (uneducated, good natured, oafish), clear, exact processing of thoughts, eyes that were alive and integrated, apparently spontaneous gestures.�?
Eamon will have his drama fees in 2017 paid for by Rotorua Energy
Trust.
He thanked his teachers Gabrielle Thurston and Candice Visser for helping make this possible.
- Three John Paul College students — Theresa McLean, Elsie Spires and Olivia Temm — were named the sole national scholarship recipients for their grades by Speech New Zealand.
- Olivia, who received her scholarship for Speech and Drama Grade 6, also received the Grade 5 scholarship the year before.
- Elsie received the scholarship for Grade 7 and Theresa for Grade 8.
The three were graded on a year’s worth of work done through an extracurricular speech and drama syllabus.
