Quarterly Report April – July 2026

For Programmes and Services Delivered
1 April – 31 July 2026

Summary

With the resignation of 2 trustees in May and the Foundation having been established for a year, the past few months have seen us focused on:

• Maintaining the existing support to Glen Innes School and community through the programmes we are committed to, including the funding towards an ECE teacher, providing Mr Steve’s Breakfast Programme Monday to Thursday, facilitating the food support programme and initiatives such as the fun run with Police and school trips to the zoo.
• Onboarding our new trustees and setting the strategic plan for the next 3 years, with a focus on creating a sustainable organisation with the primary goals of improving literacy and attendance.

Jo Caughey (our delivery coordinator) continues to be an integral part of the Foundation. She continues to deepen our existing relationships with the Police, Social Workers in Schools and other supporters and is now building new relationships with those who believe in the Foundation and, just like Steve did, are asking, how can I help?

Our new trustees are Rosina Webb, Ashley Webb and Amy Knight. Rosina is Steve’s sister and, along with her husband Ashley, spent many many hours supporting Steve in his work. We are so lucky to have their vision, clarity and “no nonsense” attitude on the Foundation. Amy Knight has a professional connection to the Foundation, being the manager of the Social Workers in Schools for the wider Glen Innes community, and was motivated to join the Foundation because she saw firsthand the difference the work that Steve did was making at a grassroots level. Amy brings deep knowledge of the local community and strong relationships with other providers, and we are excited to have her strong, calm and passionate input into this next phase of the Foundation.

Our current priority is completing a wide discovery phase before the end of the year. To do this we are:

• Asking questions of those we support and those we work with, to get their views on what is making the biggest difference and what we could consider pausing or enhancing.
• Gathering and reviewing available data to see if we are actually making a difference with what we are currently delivering.
• Connecting with other organisations and experts that have alignment to our goal of improving literacy.
• Reconnecting with the wider network that supported Steve over the years.

From here we will be confirming our 2027 initiatives and the roadmap to deliver these, including funding and how we will measure our success. In line with this, we will be maintaining many of our “bread and butter” programmes that we know matter to the community and looking to expand these in alignment with our goals.

As always, we are grateful for the support of the Ted Manson Foundation, the various supermarkets and suppliers who provide food towards our programmes, the Glen Innes Police, the Principal and staff at Glen Innes School and everyone else who is working alongside us to meet the needs of the community.

The Three Year Strategy

In July we held a strategic planning day with our new Trustees. We were fortunate to have Chris Sullivan from Springboard Trust donate his time to facilitate the afternoon for us.

Through the planning session, our thinking developed from just providing literacy and attendance support to Glen Innes School to the more lofty goal of developing programmes that support kids to choose to read and to be above expectation for literacy in Glen Innes and eventually other communities facing similar challenges.

We recognised that we are fortunate to be able to scaffold off the goodwill, hard work and relationships that Steve developed over a number of years, but we also acknowledged that the magic of Steve is irreplaceable and to be successful we will need to forge our own path. This resonated with all Trustees as Steve was constantly changing as the needs around him changed.

We agreed on a set of principles to guide us:

• We will focus on being an enabler – connecting and multiplying like Steve did. We want to work with other organisations to align and partner so that the impact ripples deeper and wider than any one organisation can do in isolation.
• We will focus on building capacity, not dependency – one of the values that Steve had was to provide support for a “season”. We want to create programmes that support children’s literacy and a love for reading as a stepping-stone to realising their potential and greatness.
• We will prioritise working with the willing – we will be clear in what we are bringing to the table and the feedback we require to show the impact our support is having. This is important so we and our supporters have confidence we are making an actual difference.
• We will filter all opportunities against our strategy – we will ask ourselves if an initiative or opportunity aligns with our goals around literacy and attendance. If it doesn’t align, we will regrettably pass no matter how good it feels. This was important to prevent us dabbling in many things but excelling in none.

Attached to this report is the full slide deck that we prepared with Chris, which summarises the day in more detail. It is still in draft, with the goal setting to be finalised after the discovery phase is complete.

We are conscious of not standing still, so we have already started some work towards the first phase of design, including:

• Reviewing the current budget and agreeing a list of those items we are not currently able to fund in 2027. Once finalised, our priority is to speak with Glen Innes School and the Police as those most likely to be impacted, and to support them to find alternative funding as required.
• Obtaining data from Glen Innes (and we are asking for it from other schools in the area) on their literacy and attendance. These results will be our baseline from which we can measure our success in coming years.
• Speaking with Glen Innes School, police and social workers regarding attendance. We are conscious that the Government now has attendance targets which Principals are required to report against, and want to clarify the role of the Foundation in supporting attendance against this.
• Meeting with supporters to see where there is alignment between us.

Over the coming 6 weeks we are scheduled:

• To start engaging with other schools in the Glen Innes community to understand their needs and willingness to work with us on our initiatives.
• To meet with experts in literacy development of children up to the age of 7. We are aware that there is much research in this area at both an academic and practical level, and are leveraging our connections to understand what has been tried, what worked and what hasn’t worked.
• To explore some quick wins to support our literacy goal. We are connecting with people that have books to donate, looking to join the dots and hopefully get books to kids before the summer holidays.

There is a lot of work to be done gathering information, meeting people and then developing the ideas. While there is a desire to keep doing and doing more, we are committed to stepping through the process for the long-term clarity and sustainability it creates.

What else have we been doing?

While much of our focus has been on the strategic day and resetting the Foundation, we remain busy delivering our existing initiatives and supporting Glen Innes School and the community.

Jo Caughey, our Operations Coordinator, continues to be a godsend. She is a superstar in her delivery of the Mr Steve Breakfast Programme for the students at Glen Innes School and is a critical link between the Foundation and the School.

Relationships continue to be a priority for us. We recently had the police join the students for breakfast, which was great. For me, watching the police carry hot milo for the little 5/6 year olds while engaging with the older kids wanting one of their friends to be put in handcuffs showed the impact of the hard work that’s been done to create positive police relationships in the community.

We are continuing to provide food support to the wider community. This includes a group of volunteers collecting and packing donated food, and food parcels donated by St Kents. These food parcels are distributed into the wider community by social workers, churches and other organisations. The food parcels are collected from the school on a Thursday, creating a welcome opportunity for each person to connect with others in the community. This intangible benefit is one of many that we are focused on trying to retain (albeit in a possibly different way).

Steve’s legacy lives on, with people continuing to donate furniture, whiteware, clothing and food to the school to distribute. The ute provided by the Ted Manson Foundation is so helpful in this process and we are considering how this community connection can continue.

We are building a wonderful relationship with Diocesan School for Girls. It started through a connection with Feed the Need and the students packing and dropping off lunch packs for the community food support, and then the Diocesan girls helped with replanting the vege garden. As Diocesan has a strong service part of the curriculum, we are exploring other opportunities to connect and collaborate.

The ECE/literacy support teacher is continuing to work in the junior school with students who need help. We are working with Jono Hendricks to obtain the data this support has with the achievement standards of those students.

Jo and Rhys Smith (Blocker) have met with 2 members of the local Rotary organisation. This is a relationship that Blocker has continued to maintain on behalf of the Foundation over the past year. The great news is that Rotary has chosen the Foundation as the charity to support at their annual golf day, and we can expect to receive a generous donation in the new year.

Jo has been working on securing Joseph Parker to come to school to speak to the students about the importance of attendance and the wider school values. We are looking to connect with other well-known New Zealanders to bring stories of success, hard work and achievement to the school and, over time, to the wider community.

We have connected with Feed the Need, an organisation that provides non-perishable foods in either snack/lunch, weekend or school holiday packs. In talking with Blocker, he identified a real need at Glen Taylor School, so we are grabbing this opportunity to support another school and start to build that connection.

The charity I Am Hope has offered a book for each student at Glen Innes School, which is an exciting alignment with our literacy goal. We hope to build this connection over the coming months, enabling us to partner with them into next year.

There is a fun run scheduled for 11 September at St Kents Senior School. We will be supporting this along with the Police, and it will be attended by Glen Innes and 2 other local schools.

We have been working with our website provider to ensure we are optimising the website, and are finalising our media plan to keep our presence strong.

We have developed a number of policies and procedures for the Foundation. These are being published on our website as part of our commitment to transparency.

We have started reengaging with our wider support network to keep sharing the great work the Foundation is doing. We are also creating a database of the willing, who we can reach out to when we need some targeted support.

We have done a skills analysis amongst the existing trustees and will be recruiting for a trustee who might be connected to the local community, experienced in the education sector, or have fundraising and volunteer expertise.

Overall, we are so excited by the upcoming months and developing some goals and initiatives that make a meaningful difference to the community. As always, we welcome feedback, suggestions and all offers of support.

Tawhiti rawa i tō tatou haerenga atu te kore haere tonu.

We have come too far not to go further; we have done too much not to do more.

Sir James Hēnare

Please get in touch at any time. We’d love to hear from you and we’re always keen to chat about what more we can do for the kids.

Jo Caughey – Operations Coordinator, jo@stevefarrellyfoundation.org.nz or 022 190 9656

Generous offerings from the community is what keeps us going. Along with the massive support from our major sponsors, it is the reason we can do what we do. For that we thank you.