Corporate partnerships and our community celebration

Last Friday, on the 16th of October our school was lucky enough to have over 100 volunteers from The Icebreaker company come to volunteer at our school and celebrate our community. One of the main reasons we needed support was that we are a small, low decile school in one of the most impoverished socio-economic areas of Mt Roskill, Auckland. We have a big heart though as our community courageously got through its' own pandemic crisis as we had a mini COVID cluster, just down the road in Term 3. Also we had decided to partner with Icebreaker earlier than Term 3 but we were delayed and had to wait to do something together until we got to level 1.

Together they worked with happy hearts and smiles, while they set up the hall with free clothing and kai, painted our garden boxes/entire fence, built a barbecue, cooked sausages, pulled out weeds, cleaned our garden beds, fixed broken frames, planted trees, painted everything, made kai to give away, removed 2 skip bins of rubbish, ate a few scones and even played Hungerball with our kids. So our school looks very different now and it has had a fantastic make over.  

These awesome people donated lots of clothing, kai, goods and gave up their day to celebrate our community, which has gone through alot during COVID19 this last term. 

I also want to thank our staff especially Mrs Saunders and Mrs Carlton for organising the events in the hall and volunteer activities. Also thanks to Miss Bound for getting the Hunderball and sports events. Mr Lopi and Mr Tupou our Board Chair were also working hard in the gardens today - Malo Aupito for their service to our kura. 

Our kids and school whanau deserved to be celebrated and I want to thank all of whanau for supporting one another during this time and coming to the celebration event. 

So you might be wondering why would coporates have anything to do with a public school. Well, for Icebreaker CEO - Greg Smith it was about sharing kaitiakitanga with his team and giving back to the community and environment. Some corporates may do volunteer days as a means to raise media presence but Icebreaker and the charitablr trust "whodidyouhelptoday?" partnered with our school to form a ongoing relationship. For the staff who came, their wairua-spirits were also lifted as they had work hard and problem solve in small groups with specific task eg. clean up crew, painting crew, planting crew. I met most of the folks and was amazed jow hard working people in marketing, sales and digital departments can be. I had been chucked in with the clean ip crew and we even managed to fill two 9 cubic metre skip bins!

My challenge to corporates and schools is to find a Trust like Whodidyouhelptoday? to connect you to a likely partner as it is worth the effort. Our people deserve it and also it gives the corporates something back as well - the value of Manaakitanga whilst serving others. We created a pathway for our community people to connect with a corporate and during these dark COVID times fostering values like katiakitanga and manaakitanga is how we can get through it together. 

Lastly nga mihi nui/thankyou to 100+ volunteers from Icebreaker and Jo from "Whodidyouhelptoday?"Trust that came with a purpose to celebrate and awhi kaitiakitanga for our kids, whanau and staff, you have made a difference and given us alot of encouragement and hope. 

Click the links, if you want to learn more about Icebreaker or Whodidyouhelptoday?