CHILDREN’S EFFORT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 December 1939, Page 7

CHILDREN’S EFFORT

i YOUNG NORTHLANDERS’ ENTERPRISE — - VISIT TO THE EXHIBITION. North Auckland children, comprising a party of 300 Europeans and Maoris, will visit the Centennial Exhibition early in 1940. Not one of these children has visited a city. This visit has been made possible mainly through the efforts of the children themselves. whose ages range from 11 to 18. To date they have amassed a total of £5OO. and their object is to make their week's holiday at a cost of not more than £5 for each child, with all expenses, including travel and accommodation, included. District schools and clubs have raised money to send, as their representatives to the Exhibition, boys and girls whose parents could not afford to send them to Wellington. The children to make the trip will be sent with the approval of the people in their own district. In some places a properly constituted election will decide which is to be the lucky representative: others will be selected on points gained at school sports gatherings: some are being drawn by ballot. At one school an intelligence test is proposed to select the candidate most likely to benefit from the trip. It is planned that the children will have three I’ull days at the Exhibition to study its social and cultural aspects, and also to enjoy thoroughly all the fun of the fair. In Gammon’s Road School —a tiny single-roomed building 20 miles from Kaikohe— the boys have chopped all the firewood for the school and have been paid for it. and they have also chopped wood to be sent to Kaikohe. their nearest township, for sale. At Matarau School, in the Hokianga district, children have contributed their pennies to swell their school fund and Hikurangi children have tramped the countryside, some travelling up to ten miles, collecting bottles to sell. "I was late for school because I waited on the road lor a man who comes to buy bottles.” was the excuse of one small Maori boy early in the campaign. Nearly £5 has been earned by Edwin Williams, of Owhiwa. who has grown plants, sold bottles and acted as an agent for a bookseller.

At Kakanui Native School, a native settlement near Kaukapapa, the children have grown vegetables for sale and assisted their teacher in poultrykeeping. They have also sold bottles, bones and fungus and carried groceries for isolated settlers. In this way individual effort and organised enterprise have been combined all through Northland to .make this trip possible for 500 young New Zealanders who otherwise would have missed the greatest Exhibition the Dominion has known.

Although tribute is due to the children themselves, deep appreciation is also warranted for the efforts of those who have guided and fostered the project for many months.