Aka Aka wins $15,000
Aka Aka School has received $15,000 after coming second place in the Genesis Energising Young Minds competition.
Principal Michaelene Nu’u, said the funding will allow Aka Aka to devote a classroom solely to teaching science, technology, engineering and maths.
‘‘ A grant like this will have such a positive impact on our children and how they feel about themselves and their pride in the school.
‘‘It means we can put money into things like drones, lots of cool little things we wouldn’t have been able to do.’’
Student Aden, 11, said he’s got his sights on the motion picture equipment.
‘‘I like the technology stuff... to do with green screen and stock motion movies, that should be really cool.’’
Aka Aka was up against 685 other schools nationwide competing for a total of $50,000 in prize money.
To enter the competition schools were nominated by the community. Once nominated, locals could vote for thier school. The five schools with the most votes made it into the five top spots.
From there, seven judges narrowed the five finalists down to three winners.
Genesis spokeswoman Kiely Evans said while Aka Aka may not be big compared to some of the schools who entered, it was the community support behind it, that gave it a fighting chance.
‘‘We saw lot of the schools in the Franklin area with a really strong community mindset. We saw a galvanising of friends and family.’’
She says while there there was some friendly competition between Franklin schools, in the end the community came together to support the district’s youth.
‘‘As the competition went on and some of these schools realised, ‘actually we’re probably not going to make it,’ they threw their support into other schools in the area which was really cool.’’