Ball Initiative for High School students in the South Auckland area

Our amazing team has been working really hard on this initiative since this page went live. We have learnt a lot about what it takes to organise an event of this magnitude and the importance of consultation, collaboration and inclusion when doing something for the community. We had faced a few obstacles in terms of establishing contact with students on the ground so that we could make this event 100% right for them. We were afraid that it was dragging on for too long and we wouldn't be able to get it done as quick as we wanted to.

We as a team have unanimously decided to donate these funds to 4 THA KULTURE (Instagram handle: @4thaakulture). They are a student-led and run collective based in South Auckland who are doing amazing work with the rangatahi there. When we spoke to one of their members about passing on these funds to them, we were told they already had an initiative in motion to donate $1,000 each to schools around the South Auckland area for their balls. This aligns almost perfectly with our heart and intention behind raising these funds.

We thank you for your willingness to give to this cause and hope that you understand your donations are essentially going towards the same cause despite the slight change in how the funds will be administered. However, given these changes, if you would like a refund, please just email helpdesk@givealittle.co.nz from the email address entered when you donated with your request to have your donation refunded.

More info about 4 Tha Kulture from Fili Fepulea'i-Tapua'i

4 Tha Kulture is an activist group that has primarily focused on projects benefitting low decile South Auckland schools.

4 Tha Kulture has worked in numerous spaces like the School Strike 4 Climate, the Time 4 Greatness homework centres with the Oceanian Leadership Network and have provided food parcels to students in need during COVID 19 alongside the ASA Foundation. We are involved in the community and are transparent with what we do as a non-profit youth-run organisation.

Since we were only recently approached about this opportunity, the schools this money will go to have not been chosen yet but we have thought of a plan of distribution if this goes through.

Due to our broad social media reach and our contacts as newly graduated students from said high schools, our initiative is based on the engagement of our audiences.

As an environmentalist group that is well known in these schools, we want to propose a challenge to all low decile South Auckland schools to show how they can make their schools as eco-friendly as possible whether through indigenous-based teachings, sustainable changes in their school, or spreading awareness. Since we can't measure who would "deserve" the money most, we want to give $1000 each to the seven schools with the best submissions showcasing their ways of being more eco-friendly. These amounts of money would go towards the school's balls since there couldn't be a South Auckland ball altogether.

From there we would contact the schools and transfer the money into the proper avenues as a donation.