On Sunday, 6 June 2009, SWYNZ hosted a beach clean-up along the Petone foreshore in Wellington as part of a number of post-program activities the Association hopes to implement. SWY alumni members from 3 different batches, along with friends, family and others worked solidly during the morning to tidy up part of the Petone beach that is most often left out of designated areas of clean up. By lunchtime, the group had managed to gather a significant amount of rubbish within the area between the playground on The Esplande and the river mouth.

SWYNZ President Josh Bahlman was stoked at the success of the event, as concerns regarding the weather and even the amount of litter on the beach played on the organisers minds. "It was a great day, we didn't know what to expect with the weather, but despite the cold conditions people showed up and we were able pick up over 100kgs of rubbish!"

The event attracted a total of 26 people, including a group of staff and students from the International Pacific College who were brought down from Palmerston North by Miho Fukuda (SWY19, Japan) to help with the event. Also in attendance were exchange students from AFS, a couple who had heard of the event through Facebook, as well as friends from the wider SWY network. Of this support, Bahlman would like to extend his gratitude to those people who took the time to participate and hopes to be able to hold more of these kinds of events in the future. "The idea is to start small and expand from there. We hope to create more of these kind of events, not only in Wellington, but also across the country. Particularly where there are concentrated pockets of SWY alumni members, we would like to be able to utilise our collective skills and networks to bring people together to hold more of these events for the betterment of our community and to promote the amazing opportunity the Ship for World Youth program is able to give youth of New Zealand."

SWY Alumni members involved were Josh Bahlman (SWY20), Tai Ahu (SWY20), Mariana Whareaitu (SWY20), Fumiko Ogasawara (SWY20, Japan), Areti Metuamate (SWY21), Kieran Brown (SWY21), Claire Pettigrew (SWY21), and Miho Fukuda (SWY19, Japan).

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