Vanuatu Trip
In the Term 2 holidays, 24 Year 12 and 13 Geography students and 3 staff travelled to Port Vila, Vanuatu for immersive cultural and environmental experiences.
Highlights of the trip included a river kayaking and cascades trip, climbing the volcanic island of Nguna and swimming at a neighbouring Island Pele, swimming with turtles, and visiting local primary schools and villages.
Fundraising and donations enabled us to gift sports equipment and uniforms, art supplies, and reading material to two Year 1 – 8 schools in Mele Village – one English-speaking with 750 students and 1,000 students at a French-speaking school. Both schools had limited resources. The Ni-Vanuatu teachers and students were overwhelmed by the gifts and regarding the sports equipment then constructed Volleyball posts out of timber on the spot.
Not only were our Ōtūmoetai College students impacted by the attitudes of the Ni-Vanuatu students toward their education, but they were impressed with how happy and resourceful the students were. Special thanks to all those who supported the trip – the donated gifts provided a meaningful connection for our students with the Ni-Van students, and more importantly resources to enable richer learning experiences for the teachers and students of Mele Village, Efate, Vanuatu.
This trip was a life changing experience for our staff and students as shown in the quotes below:
“…it was an eye opening experience…and surreal seeing the realities of life in a third world country rather than images from the media… I was struck by the fact that although many of the Ni-Vans were materially quite poor, their lives, strong sense of community, and attitudes highlighted a ‘richness in life’ in spite of their situation. This caused me to reflect on what is truly important in life…it was an experience I’ll never forget…”
Smokefree Rockquest & Songwriting Success
“BIG NEWS! – 2 of our acts have been selected as Top 10 for the National Finals of the RockQuest in September. Bloody Overalls, and Aisha & Bebe!
bla bla uh huh boo hoo gained a Highly Commended.
Congratulate them all when you see them. They have all worked hard and committed to something bigger than themselves”. – Mr Bodman
bla bla uh huh boo hoo, Bloody Overalls, and Aisha & Bebe are in the Top 30 bands. To be in the Top 30 high school bands in the country is a huge achievement, they all win a day in a recording studio and media mentoring.
bla bla uh huh boo hoo – Lucy Dibble, Zen Miyanami, Ryan Paxie, Lexey Walker
Bloody Overalls – Mitchell Shannon, Fletcher Harbutt, Tyler Sainty
Aisha & Bebe – Aisha Scott, Bebe Campbell
Rachel Stevens and Kaitlyn Napier have both placed in the Top 40 of the esteemed Wright Family Foundation Peace Song Competition. They have won $800 to put toward recording studio time.
We will be sharing the completed songs as well as our school album later in the year for your listening pleasure.
Junior Art Exhibition – 3-24 August
The Junior Art Exhibition Opening is tonight, 5.30pm at The People’s Gallery.
Art work featured is Drawing, Painting and Sculpture from some of our super talented Year 9 and 10 students.
Please check it out, open at the People’s Gallery every weekend for a month (from the 3rd until the 24th August).
Te Pikikōtuku a Ngāt Ranginui Peformance for Matariki
Te Pikikōtuku a Ngāti Ranginui performed a beautiful bracket at our school Matariki celebrations and we would like to acknowledge and thank all of our performers who participated.
They trained very hard for their first performance and we are looking forward to more stage time for our kura. Kei runga noa atu kōutou!
Business Studies Students Feature
For the full article please click here.
You can check out the ReelClean Soap website here.
The groups will be on display during Open Evening next Tuesday 6 August (Tour 1 starts at 3.30pm and Tour 2 at 5.45pm). They will be at a market at Bayfair on Thursday night, 8 August.
Thanks for supporting our young enterprise students!
Study Sessions & Mentoring Support
Our Mentor Leadership Team (Beatrice Proverbs, Charles Anderson, Charlie Minshall, Reuben Lightfoot, Phillipa Woodward – Deputy Principal) have organised the study session dates below for Term 3.
If you have any queries, please feel free to email mentoring@otc.school.nz
