An exciting day at Rata Street School with Education Minister Chris Hipkins and Mayor Ray Wallace, TAKA Trust Chairman, Matt Reid, School Staff, Board members and some of the tamariki who are part of the TAKA Wifi scheme.
What TAKA Trust has achieved so far
- TAKA Wifi. In 2018, thanks to Chorus, Network4Learning and the Ministry of Education, 124 Years 5 and 6 children from Rata Street School get free wifi access to their school’s secure managed network. This project has continued into 2022 and now includes some tamariki from Pomare School and Taita Central Schools who previously had no wifi in their homes.
- The Trust are currently working with Government to ensure all children from the Hutt Valley’s lowest decile schools have the ability to learn with family in their own home – like most kiwi kids can. We are working on connecting to 10,000 homes so those who need it most can be connected to the world – and for kids that means their learning can continue after school hours.
- School bikes. RIDE Holidays has worked with their supporters to raise funds for over 700 new bikes and helmets across 25schools. They are partners of TAKA Trust who continue to fundraise all year around to provide our tamariki with brand new safe bikes and helmets.
- Symphony in the Hutt. In 2018, we staged our first free concert at the Walter Nash Centre with the support of Orchestra Wellington, Lower Hutt Sports Awards, Hutt Mana Trust, Pelorus Trust, Hutt City Council, Creative Communities and KPMG. This world class event was attended by more than 1000 people from the north eastern suburbs. TAKA Trust decided to make this an annual event following the overwhelming enthusiasm from tamariki, whanau and the wider community. Successful concerts have since been held in 2019, 2020 and 2021 each attracting more than 1000 people. In 2022 we got our groove on to an epic collection of Disco tracks and had a record numbers with more than 1400 in attendance. A magical evening was had by all. A huge thank you to our sponsors.
- Sport! More than 4,000 tickets to Hurricanes, Wellington Lions and Phoenix games for children and their families to attend.
- Bus Trips. Each term, free buses take school groups on educational trips to Te Papa, Parliament, Westpac Stadium, Space Place and even over to the Wairarapa. Providing buses to our low decile schools enables them to take tamariki on excursions around the Wellington region to places which, in some cases, the children have never been before.
- KPMG has provided free professional expertise to each school, manpower at working bees and Christmas presents. They also offer scholarships to Taita College students.
- More corporate support. Corporate partners have donated laptops and computers to the five schools.
- Private generosity. A private donor has provided hundreds of school bags, stationery items and drink bottles to the children that need them the most.
