School Children Win Thousands of Dollars for Their Schools

School Children Win Thousands of Dollars for Their Schools in Kidscan Christmas Coffee Cup Competition

The Coffee Club New Zealand and KidsCan have launched three new Christmas coffee cup designs and two napkin designs, all created by school children who won a nationwide Christmas Cup Art Competition. The Coffee Club also introduced a “highly commended” award this year with six students recognised for their creativity. The total prize pool was increased to $15,600, up by almost $6000 from last year.

The winning designs earned schools a total of $13,750 thanks to their budding artists. The first place design, by a student from Glen Eden’s TKKM o Hoani Waititi School, features Santa Claus holding a coffee cup, with reindeer drawing a sleigh in the background. It will appear on large takeaway cups.

The new designs hit stores on 1 November and will be available until mid-January. The winning artists were selected from across New Zealand, beating almost 300 entries from 30 schools supported by KidsCan.

“We’re into our fourth year of supporting KidsCan with the Christmas Cup Art Competition, and it’s one of the things we’re most proud of. We always get great entries and it’s pretty cool for us to be able to put out the winning designs for other people to enjoy,” says Brad Jacobs, Director of The Coffee Club. “We added a new “highly commended” category this year so we could recognise even more of the kids and their artistic efforts. We were supposed to award five but had to give out six in the end as the quality of work was just so high!”

"We really love the Christmas Cup Competition and we’re so proud of the clearly talented children going to our KidsCan schools. The cups really are pieces of art! It’s great to get so many children involved in something which encourages them to be creative, while also drawing attention to our charity which has been helping create brighter futures for Kiwi kids since 2005," says Julie Chapman, KidsCan CEO and Founder. "We’re really thankful to The Coffee Club for their support in making this happen and raising awareness of KidsCan and the wonderful students we support."

The Christmas Cup competition aims to raise awareness of the work being done by KidsCan to support the education, health and wellbeing of children living in hardship. Now in it’s fourth year it has seen more than $40,000 donated to schools and the kids by The Coffee Club in that time.

The winning design by Kairau Wilson (age 7), of TKKM o Hoani Waititi School took first prize, earning $4,000 for her school.

Second place was won by Cassius Marsh (age 10) of Mayfair School in Hastings, winning $3,000 for her school. Third place went to Emily Hayashi (age 11), from Glen Eden Primary School, Auckland whose design won $2,000. Fourth place was awarded to Nevaeh Hollis (age 8) from Te Hapara School in Gisborne, winning $1000 for the school. Fifth place went to Tayla Francis (age 10) from Spreydon School in Christchurch. Her school received $750 in prize money.

The five young artists each received $250 Westfield vouchers. The six highly commended entrants, which included children from Auckland, Taupo and Levin, were each given $500 for their schools and $100 in vouchers for themselves.

KidsCan works to aid individuals, communities, businesses and the government to co-operate in providing food, clothing and basic health care in schools to enable all disadvantaged children to reach their full potential. The Coffee Club New Zealand has been involved in a number of campaigns and initiatives with KidsCan including The Big Night In Telethon back in 2009, the Mystery Envelope Appeal, Christmas Crackers, Campbell Live Lunchbox Day Appeal and KidsCan Online Auctions.

For more information on KidsCan, including information on how you can get involved either as in individual or business, please visit the website kidscan.org.nz. For more information on The Coffee Club New Zealand please visit thecoffeeclub.co.nz.

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