MORE than 1600 shoe boxes full of educational goodies have made it through a six-month journey, storms and a school-term break to safely arrive in Timor Leste.
The educational care parcels were sent from Tewantin, Cooroy and Pacific Paradise state schools in June and have now arrived at the Sao Miguel school at Raikotu, about 30 minutes west of Dili.
The school has 150 kindergarten students, 250 primary school students and some 200 junior high school students, but the surrounding area of need stretches to include hundreds more.
With the help of the Community Bank branches of Bendigo Bank in Tewantin, Cooroy and Marcoola and the Rotary Clubs of Noosa and Cooroy, local students were able to send the parcels to the school.
Each parcel took the form of a decorated shoe box with enclosed items including exercise books, rulers, erasers, pens and pencils, all topped off with a personal item from each student from Cooroy and Tewantin State Schools to the child opening it at the other end.
Tewantin State School principal Corrie Connors said learning of the arrival of the shoe boxes had brought an emotional reaction from her students.
“The students and our school all have a real connection to this project,” she said.
“They had a ball putting the care parcels together, and it’s great to see their hard work and the fabulous support of their families, the Community Bank branch of Bendigo Bank and Rotary Clubs of Noosa and Cooroy have finally made their way into the hands of the kids who need them most.”
Kerri Wright from the Tewantin Community Bank branch agreed and said she felt the project continued to build on something special.
“Our community banks are all about giving back, and in this case the community recipients have been international ones. This project is about community partnership and feels as relevant now as when we started in 2008,” she said.
“We’re delighted to continue our collaboration with Rotary and to watch some of the kids recognise their shoe box in the video and photos. We all love this project and are committed to doing it all again in 2016.”
