The New Year News

We have big plans for the year, supporting our vision for improved literacy, stopping truancy, and providing the kids with the resources they need to succeed. As Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon for changing the world” and we’re committed to making it a great year of education for our kids.

Looking back to 2025, we’re super proud of all that’s been achieved by the foundation in these first few months in honour of Steve. We were just a group of Steve’s friends who wanted to help. We worked together to form the new trust, with vital financial backing from Sir Ted Manson. To date, we’ve supported growth in literacy by helping fund an ECE teacher and purchasing teaching resources not covered by MOE. We’ve helped reduce truancy through sourcing bras for senior girls, sourcing knickers and shorts for juniors when they have accidents, discussing with the girls how to live life with your period, and miles more. Where teachers have identified a problem we have jumped in to help, providing quick and effective solutions to fill the gaps. It’s been challenging but super rewarding !

Key Wins:

• We brought in the amazing Jo Caughey to implement our programme delivery on the ground . Yay Jo !
•  Jo organised delivery of a fantastic Christmas food event on the 20th of December for approx 600 people. Of interest, we used 70x litres of ice cream, 200x Christmas tattoos, and gave away about 200x pre-school and junior school books. Families received food and the GI School playground was set up like a fair. The highlight was seeing the kids faces when they were given lollies, ice cream, face painting, access to three bouncy castles, and as many sausages in bread as they could eat – all for free. Remember these kids often don’t have presents or holidays at Christmas. Huge thanks to our key suppliers: Neat Meat for all the sausages, New World Newmarket for all the ice cream, St Kentigern College for 100x food parcels, Christmas Box for 150x food parcels, and Bouncing Kiwis for helping the kids burn off all the sugar ! We were blown away by your support.

• We’ve paid 50% of a full time ECE/literacy support Teacher Aide to raise literacy in the junior school so the kids that were behind can work up to the same level as their classmates and fully participate in the classroom.
• Blair from Method Digital Design created our new website so we now have great online visibility and the capacity to receive online donations. We’re feeling very flash .Check us out at www.stevefarrellyfoundation.org.nz.
• Our bra programme which provided supportive modest underwear for 29 of our year 6, 7 and 8 girls to keep them attending school and engaged in sport was successfully delivered in early December.
• We sourced emergency food vouchers for whānau, and MTA fuel vouchers for volunteers and staff.
• We sourced 50x backpacks and filled them with underwear and socks to support Blocker and team from GI Police with truancy initiatives.
• We supported a Teddy Bear’s Picnic (one of Steve’s favourite events with the ‘little darlings’), books for the junior school, ingredients to bolster the school lunchs, vouchers to reward kids for going the extra mile, and heaps more….

So What?

We know we’ve delivered good programmes that will help but we know there are significant problems in this community which are working against us – things like parents not engaging with their kid’s education, high truancy at college level, family violence which means the kids are in survival mode rather than learning mode, and the day to day challenges of poverty where for example two kids are getting ready for school but there’s only one pair of knickers – we literally had a kid who didn’t come to school one day as there wasn’t any underwear to put on. So we’re learning that the practical resourcing part of our work is really important in supporting attendance and so our kid’s literacy.

What Now?

We’re planning a strategy day where trustees and supporters can delve into the issues and come up with more solutions. We have the wonderful Jo to keep delivering many of the programmes that Steve had initiated but we want to look wider than this too. How else can we change lives by driving the best level of engagement with education? Watch this space !

So that’s what we’ve been up to. Thank you for your support as we head into 2026. We are gratefully receiving your donations to assist with delivering this work. We will issue receipts at the end of the financial year or if you need a receipt earlier please let us know.

Keep up with us on Facebook where you’ll get to see all the cool pictures. And our new website has all the info you need about the foundation www.stevefarrellyfoundation.org.nz including a portal for donations .

Contact us at any time on email. We’d love to chat about what more we can do for the kids together. Here’s a quick reminder of who the trustees are for the foundation –

• Kate Donley (Chair) at chair@stevefarrellyfoundation.org.nz or 0272 646 800
• Rob Donley at rob@donley.co.nz or 0275 431 166
• Trina Lincoln at trina.lincoln@outlook.com
• Judy Carter at bhandjacarter@gmail.com or 027 307 0509
• Brian Carter at bhandjacarter@gmail.com

Thanks everyone for your support – it means a lot and we couldn’t do it without you.

We miss you Steve. Hope you are proud of our progress. Rest in peace x

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.