Two Year 10 classes worked (and taste tested) extremely hard over the past four weeks to bring Nayland College its first ever collaboration with Burger Culture. What they produced was absolutely brilliant and they raised more than $530 to be split between Child Cancer Foundation and Make A Wish Foundation.

Over the last eight weeks Nayland College has been fortunate to have Chris Williams as a student teacher. He has family connections with Burger Culture and decided to use his industry expertise to create a mini unit for the Year 10 Baking & Blogging classes.

Each class had to choose a local charity they wanted to fundraise for. Then the students were given four different themes to choose from: Pop Culture, Our Cultural, Our Planet or Our Galaxy. They were then given a chance to plan, trial and refine their designs making them appealing and eye catching for selling.

Once this was complete, the class learnt how Burger Culture promoted the opening of the restaurant. Using those stories, they had to brainstorm and plan how to promote their fundraiser. Briana Stewart went above and beyond by approaching Rebel Sports and gained a $100 voucher to raffle.

Last week each class held their fundraiser. Thursday's class raised $280 for Child Cancer Foundation and sold out within 15 minutes. Friday’s class raised $230 for Make a Wish Foundation with the help of our two local 'Make a Wish' fairies, Carol Parkinson and Janet Growcott.

'Make a Wish' is an international organisation and in Aotearoa there are 183 volunteers who are the face of the organisation in local communities working personally with children and families. Carol has been a volunteer since 2007 and Janet joined her four years ago. 

"Our role as local volunteers is to meet with 'Wish' families, determine their wish, paint a picture of them, send that information through to head office and create a wish for them," said Carol. "It's quite nice to have people on the ground that families get to meet with rather than it just being an online process."

When asked what she enjoyed the most about her volunteer role Carol replied,  "Oh my gosh, it's just incredibly humbling being able to help these kids because the majority of the kids have been through quite an awful path with their particular illnesses... to help them to have something else to focus on rather than the process that they're going through." 

"The best bit is when you get to present a child with their wish that might have been quite some time in the making, seeing it come to fruition. It's really humbling actually because you don't know what these kids go through," she said.

Janet commented, "It's just nice to see a smile on their face rather than pain on their face because that's quite often what you do see."

Chris Williams has now finished his placement at Nayland College but before he left he said, "It has been an amazing experience to work with this wonderful group of ākonga and they should be proud of what their mahi has achieved."

Nayland College Baking & Blogging would like to take this opportunity to give a huge shout out to Burger Culture in Nelson who sponsored this fundraiser by providing their deliciously famous donuts for the students to practice with and to sell at our fundraisers. Thank you for making this learning opportunity possible Burger Culture. We appreciate your support!

And a huge thank you to Chris for opening our students’ eyes about using their creative Baking & Blogging talents to give back to our community. We wish you all the best on your journey towards becoming a fully qualified teacher!

The winners of the raffle last week were Malachi Stephenson and Macs Crowley. 

A fundraising page has been set up if you would like to donate and support the Child Cancer Foundation. Click here for more info: https://childcancer-fundraising.org.nz/michaela-nicholas/posts/child-cancer-fundraiser-at-nayland-college