Mt Aspiring College Foundation
The Mount Aspiring College Foundation may sound like a bit of a mouthful - and let's face it, it's not exactly in the same league for marketing as are Nike or Google - but it is the moniker used by a group established to acquire and manage assets deemed to be beneficial to the educational interests of the students of Wanaka.
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| Location of facility (Wanaka). Click image to enlarge |
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Those assets include properties and buildings immediately surrounding Wanaka's Mount Aspiring College (a "secondary school" in the lingua of the educationally orientated). After reviewing its Trust Deed in 2005, the Foundation (for the sake of brevity, let's just call it that) decided it should be supporting educational initiatives at primary and tertiary level - which, as you might guess, is where we come in.
The University of Otago's Centre for Science Communication (not exactly the slickest of names either, when you put it like that) is pleased to work in partnership with the Foundation to develop tertiary-level outreach opportunities in Wanaka.
Now, if you know Wanaka, you will immediately recognize the ultra-cool appeal of such educational initiatives. If not, suffice it to say that Wanaka is the jewel in Central Otago, a place of breath-stopping beauty. It sits at the southern end of Lake Wanaka, gateway to Mount Aspiring National Park, with its World heritage designation and home to the distinctively pointed Mount Aspiring.
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| Earth from Above Exhibition, Wanaka 2007, supported by this programme. |
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The township has a wide variety of restaurants and cafes and the area supports year-round outdoor activities such as skiing, mountaineering, trekking, mountain-biking, rock climbing, kayaking, fishing and, if you prefer, just sitting down at the lake edge with a nice bottle of locally grown pinot noir and taking in the view.
Can there be a more inspirational environment for filmmakers, writers, creators and communicators of any hue? Perhaps we'll suggest they change their name to the Mount Inspiring College Foundation.