Ya-Ya’s Tea-Board

We’ve just received an email from Rachel Hawthorne, a teacher at Hagley college, who’s organizing a student trip to Cambodia at the end of this year. We think her mission deserves a lot of support and we believe you might be interested to know more about this project.

Here is her email:

The GLOBAL AWARENESS PROJECT trip to Cambodia in December is being developed in conjunction with Nelson based business Gecko Trails who have extensive experience guiding trips through South-East Asia and collaborating with Non-Governmental Organisations such as VSA. The purpose of the trip is three-fold.

• - Firstly, it is to have experiential learning by raising awareness of political and humanitarian issues through visiting and immersing students in the culture of a developing country that has been through much and has amazing spirit.
• - However, this is not a sightseeing trip. The Second purpose is to make a meaningful contribution to the lives of people in Cambodia through hands-on volunteer work. This will be achieved through a rural home-stay, visits to schools and squatter communities, an orphanage, several Non-Governmental Organisations and a Children’s Hospital. The students will spend a day making concrete water filters and give blood, among other more informal contributions during their rural homestay. A proportion of student fundraising for the trip will be targeted toward the purchase of meaningful resources for the schools in the home-stay community and the Non-Governmental Organisations we collaborate with.
• - The Third purpose is to support student learning in NCEA linked Social Science and Leadership courses and through the Residential component of The Young New Zealand Challenge Gold Award.

The students have been fundraising for several months already and their activities have included the inimitable sausage sizzles, delivering of Yellow Pages, a Trivia Night, an Art Auction, a movie night, individual sponsorship, raffles and the like.

We are hugely excited about this opportunity for our students to travel overseas and have a learning experience that will be far-reaching and life-changing. We see this as an investment in their futures and the future of the communities they choose to participate in as effective, enterprising and thoughtful adults.

The trivia night takes place at Hagley College this Friday (Sep 21) at 7.30pm. $10 per person, 4-6 per team. There will be nearly $3000 worth of prizes (including some of Ya-Ya’s teas and tea accessories).

For more info, contact
Rachel Hawthorne
Hagley College
hw@hagley.school.nz
ph. 3793090