UNESCO MEDIA RELEASE: Northland School junior historians awarded UNESCO Living Heritage Award

Northland School junior historians awarded UNESCO Living Heritage Award Nearly sixty years after a young New Zealand pilot died saving a village in WWII, a group of Wellington school children have won a Living Heritage Award for an online project that remembers his life and sacrifice.

Youngsters from the Wellington suburb of Northland had played in the Stellin Memorial Park for the past forty years - but no one seemed to know how it got its name. This year students at Northland Primary School embarked on a Living Heritage research project in which they discovered the park was named after James Kingston Stellin, a heroic young Wellington-born pilot who died while saving a village and school in France.

"Living Heritage, Taonga Tuku Iho Awards celebrate our country's heritage and or treasures," says NZ National Commission for UNESCO chair, Bryan Gould. "UNESCO recognises that living or intangible heritage provides people with a sense of identity and continuity. Helping young people to learn from their past is a key way to help prepare them for the future."

As part of the research process children visited the park, student researched on the Internet, talked to a local historian, watched a DVD of a dedication ceremony at the park and found photographs that told a story.

Living Heritage is a free, bilingual (English-Maori) online resource that enables schools all over New Zealand to develop and publish websites about heritage treasures of their communities. Living Heritage preserves history and culture in a digital format and allows children's voices to present a view of New Zealand on the World Wide Web.

The New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO helped establish the Living Heritage Taonga Tuku Iho Awards to celebrate schools whose work contributes to UNESCO objectives by capturing heritage resources for future generations

Living Heritage (Tikanga Tuku Iho) is a project of the 2020 Communications Trustin partnership with The Learning Centre Trust of New Zealand, The National Library of New ZealandTe Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, and Sun Microsystems.

James Kingston Stellin was born in Lyall Bay Wellington in 1922, he joined the Royal Airforce as a pilot and was killed in 1944 while successfully defending the village of St Macloula Briere. His father donated land in Northland so that a park could be erected in his son's memory. Meanwhile, thousands of kilometres in the village of St Maclou la Briere a memorial to James Stellin still stands in the town square.

Visit Northland Schools Website: http://www.livingheritage.org.nz/schools/primary/northland-school/index...php

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