Jinty Mactavish is a young South Island documentary maker, determined to get young people to care about their Environment.
A masters student at Otago University, Jinty is touring the South Island helping run Enviroschools workshops, tackling climate change issues and sustainability.
"As part of my job at Enviroschools we are running a region tour," she says. "We are calling it the Regeneration Regional Tour, looking at creating the future we want for our city and for our country."
Jinty is also looking at developing a resource kit for secondary schools with her award winning film, Lessons From A Melting Icecap.
The film features three students, Annika Metua, Peggy Russell and Susan Smirk who travel from Dunedin to Greenland and who come face-to-face with the harsh realities of climate change.
The film takes the huge often intangible issues of climate change and sustainability, and gives them a human face - a young, hopeful, very Kiwi one.
"It was an incredibly emotional experience," Jinty says. "I didn't expect to be emotionally involved in the story as I was."
Greenland is suffering the effects of climate change, with receding glaciers and human waste.
The plan with the film is to take it into schools and inspire young people to bring about change in their communities.
"I am really hoping this film will be integrated into the curriculum," Jinty says. "As part of my masters, I am looking at ways for that to be come a reality and I really hope that we will have some teachers on board to help make that change."
However those sorts of events with the school students are about to be a thing of the past. The education for sustainability budget in schools has been cut, meaning an end to Enviroschools.
"The Government has decided that education for sustainability isn't a priority area, but of course we think it is," Jinty says. "We are confident it is an oversight and it will be reinstated."
Jinty is determined to get her film and its resource kit into schools as a valuable teaching resource with a powerful message.
"I would love to see this film in every school in the country," she says. "I think the three girls have the potential like all the other young people in the country to create the future that we want for New Zealand a sustainable future and to see this film in schools will inspire other people to take action and make a difference and I'd love to see that happen."