Camberley School community project

Camberley School community project – Noeline Stewart

Noeline: The Camberley school project started as a project with my year 11s, where they developed a product and sold it to raise some money so that Camberley could equip the kitchen that they had built in their new block. Then once we had done that, we realised that we probably could do a little more with some of their students so my year 12 class picked up working with the year 5 and 6 class and we picked the girls from that class obviously.

Each of my students worked with one of their students and they taught them how to cook and developed a recipe for their favourite meal. The Camberley girls came over here to school and we cooked with them. Spent a bit of time finding out what they liked, did a bit of stakeholder feedback on the trials and tests that we did.

We ended up developing some really good relationships with those girls. It was really satisfying and I think our students really enjoyed it and we’ve certainly had feedback from Camberley that they thought it was very worthwhile.

Student 1: They all had like bright smiles and they would come and say hi. They took us for a tour and they grabbed us and it was so cute because they’re so little.

Student 2: I came up with the idea to manufacture and sell chicken fettuccine. I think I sold it for $4 and we had to come up with a weight so it was consistent. So it was just staff and students buying our product. All the money went towards kitchen utensils and stuff like that for their kitchens so they could make breakfast and lunch for the kids.

Student 1: And then the kids can learn how to do things for themselves, so that when they go home, they know.

So I made a brownie, where you had the opportunity to get sponsorship. I wrote a letter to Countdown (because the recipe came from Countdown) and then they gave me a voucher, fifty dollars and that covered – because I was originally making two batches – so that covered the cost and I had money leftover to make another two batches.
Student 2: Also the year above us, year 13s then, they helped. The kids came and visited us. They helped them in the kitchen here.

Student 1: So they picked, the kids picked their favourite recipes it could be like cupcakes, pancakes, nachos anything like lasagne or spaghetti bolognese and they made it with the kids. It was really nice to see how we all bonded with them.

When we finished the project we, or they invited us over to Camberley school for an assembly. Really nice, like we all started crying because they sang songs and they welcomed us in with a waiata and it was really nice to see how thankful they were.

Student 2: Yeah.

Student 1: Even though there are like really little kids, they were still happy.
Student 2: They were excited. Yeah.
Student 1: To see what we’ve done and like I've got two nephews and a niece that go to Camberley school and it's really nice to see that "Oh, we cooked some toast today, Aunty." 
Student 2: It was a good experience for us and it just being a part of our school assessment we didn't really think about that, it was just really all about the kids. When we got there, they were all really excited to see what we had for them. They were excited to learn how to cook, like some of them don't know anything about it but when they came here and they were able to cook in our kitchens and see what we do a lot of them were really excited to come here. Some of the girls were actually saying they want to come here. It was nice to see it wasn't going to waste and that they were eager to use everything and put what they learned into practice.