Harold is belle of the OpShop ball in Waipa¯
Cambridge Town Hall was rocking to the beat of The Monroes as Harold the Giraffe and his friends from Waipa¯ King Country Life Education Trust enjoyed their OpShop Ball recently
The ball attracted a crowd of 130, who joined Harold, his good friend Nicky Wise — the trust educator who works with Harold in the mobile classroom — and the trustees, who were treated to great music and a delicious supper from Piopio’s Fat Pigeon Cafe´ .
Nicky says the array of outfits was amazing — a lot of imagination had been used to come up with garments from op shops (or the back of wardrobes) to do justice to such an occasion.
“There were many tales of extensive history of items of clothing that were in some cases over 100 years old,” she says.
Trustees are delighted with the success of the evening, which helped raise funds to keep the mobile classroom on the road.
They thanked Wilks Penny Motorcycles and Stihl Shop for providing items for auction, and local businesses Rosetown Print, Te Awamutu Paper Plus, Red Kitchen, Bunnings Te Awamutu, The Bird Cage, Sincerity Drycleaners, Pak’nSave Te Awamutu and Amber Garden Centre, together the many individuals, who contributed items, made donations and worked together to ensure that the evening was a great occasion.
Funds raised will be used to continue the work of the trust, providing specially designed programmes to over 6000 primary and intermediate school children each year throughout the Waipa¯ King Country area in the purpose-built state of the art classroom that travels from school to school.
Such is the popularity of the programme the trust is now seriously looking at the possibility of operating a second classroom to ensure that the teaching can be made available to all schools that wish to be involved.
No government funding is received by the trust, which currently needs to raise in excess of $100,000 per year to provide the valuable service.