Working with community groups and young people to care for our environment.
The ARO project invites groups to Assess, Reduce and Offset their environmental impact while creating positive outcomes for young people and communities.
The Story
Praxis was challenged that our organization could do better in caring for the environment — not just in preparing youth workers for working in a changing climate, but in the organization’s real impacts on the environment.
Aro is nine years old and is the moko of Lloyd Martin (past Co-Leader of Praxis).
Aro inspired our ARO project. For us, she personifies the connection and responsibility we feel towards the next generation. Our young people will inherit a world with significant environmental challenges that they have contributed very little towards. The ARO project believes that the act of mitigating problems like climate change should resource and empower the communities and people who will be at the frontline of this crisis.
We invite you to join us in responding to the climate crisis
Through the ARO project a group of church and community organisations in Aotearoa NZ are partnering with Praxis in doing our bit for the planet. The three challenges of ARO are:
Assess — Become aware of the impact our organisation is having on the environment, and raise awareness among young people we work with.
Reduce — Find ways to reduce our impact on the environment by reducing waste and making better use of our natural resources.
Offset — Support projects that both reduce our carbon emissions and involve young people in the process.
Each year the Praxis team and students complete practical projects with young people to reduce waste and restore natural environments.
Projects
The initiatives we support are normally coordinated by youth and community workers, or by young people themselves. They seek to improve the local environment while improving the global situation; by planting vegetation to absorb carbon emissions, reducing or recycling waste, restoring a natural ecosystem, or helping a community change a practice that is bad for the environment.
We invite community groups who are developing environmental projects with young people to contact us to discuss how to get involved.
Donations to overseas projects are not eligible for tax deduction.
Aro Day 2023
Each year at Praxis our team and students set aside a day for talanoa, learning and mahi on the land. There are many creative responses to the environmental crisis, and the range of events at our ARO days across the country reflected this.