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A New Zealand website for budding local historians, www.livingheritage.org.nz , has beaten 109 entries from around the world to take a Global Junior Challenge award.
The Global Junior Challenge is an annual international competition organised by the City of Rome, recognising projects which implement information and communication technologies to support youth education and training.
Living Heritage was established in 2001 with seed funding from the National Library, 20:20 Communications Trust, Sun Microsystems and The Learning Centre Trust of New Zealand — an organisation comprising CWA New Media and Multi Serve Education Trust. It is the sole New Zealand winner.
Four hundred and thirty contenders from 64 countries entered the competition, vying for 24 awards across five categories.
Living Heritage is a bilingual website that enables New Zealand schools to develop and publish online resources telling their communities' stories.
More than 120 schools are involved in the project with 11 having already published projects on the website covering topics such as Chinese people in Otago, Wellington's Pilot's Cottage and Recycling at Campbell's Bay Primary School.
The Living Heritage site won the category for "Projects for users up to 18 years old" along with an Israeli website, www.friendsandflags.org.
Learning Centre Trust of New Zealand chairman David Copeland says the Living Heritage site celebrates and preserves New Zealand's heritage and taonga while encouraging young people to become local historians and storytellers.
The site has won the support of the National Library's acting assistant for collection management, Geraldine Howell.
"We see this as an opportunity for young people to create a digital record of the historic, present and future heritage of New Zealand which the library can showcase and from which we can establish a permanent collection for the benefit of future generations," she says.
By Heather Wright, 07 April 2003