Tauranga Te Papa Rotary Club members have spent several hours during this school year supporting Welcome Bay School as it rolls out the new literacy and numeracy curricula.

The club assisted teachers by helping create maths resources and donating $5000 for new literacy materials, with half the funding from the June Gray Charitable Trust.

Welcome Bay School principal Jamie De La Haye said the donation will make a meaningful difference for students.

“This contribution will help us provide engaging books and learning materials that inspire a love of reading and support the literacy journey of our tamariki.

“We are deeply grateful for Rotary’s ongoing commitment to our community and their investment in the future of our children.”

Rotarian Jenny Robertson said the club reached out to the school at the start of this year to ask how they could help. With major changes to the maths curriculum, teachers needed support making new hands-on resources.

“We spent days and days there,” she said, describing a team of about a dozen Rotarians cutting, pasting, copying and laminating materials.

When the school also said that changes to the literacy curriculum required updated books, the club and the June Gray Charitable Trust provided a combined $5000 to purchase new reading resources. Robertson, a relatively new Rotarian, said the project has been incredibly rewarding.