With 25 schools participating, students were given the opportunity to demonstrate how to be 'koala smart.' Students worked in teams to come up with ideas on how to support the koalas to thrive in our region. Their projects were judged according to the artwork on their koala sculpture and their solution to the problem.

The Kempsey Year 6 students worked collaboratively to tackle a real world community problem, that being the conservation of koalas and their environment in the local area.

The students came up with some innovative ideas that resulted in the creation of a product, KASie Koala.

KASie Koala is a soft toy koala with travelling sack full of educational goodies that will be passed around the schools and early learning centres in the district. The travelling koala was created to entertain and inform young citizens for tomorrow about the problems facing koalas today.

Winning the secondary section of the competition, the group presented an idea of a 'helpline' app for people to use. Primarily it could be used for people to photograph and log koala sightings, with the app providing GPS coordinates so an exact location is noted, with this information being stored in the cloud to create a clear picture of koala numbers and living environments. It would also have a function where people finding a koala in distress for some reason can log it on the app.

The judges were impressed by the studnets' creativity, that they encouraged the progress of our students in 2020 as they develop their prototype further.

Kempsey Mayor, Liz Campbell, was pleased to be part of the Koala Smart program and congratulated the Kempsey Adventist School students for their great ideas that were made into reality through innovation, creativity and collaboration.

The Kempsey Adventist School students that participated in the Koala Smart program were given the chance to tackle a real world problem and came up with a product that sought to solve that problem.

The school is looking forward to receiving a metre-high Hello Koala sculpture and the services of a local artist who will guide the students as they paint this sculpture which will be proudly erected in the grounds of Kempsey Adventist School.

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