Preparations entering final weeks

The Samoa Service Project has been slowly gaining momentum over the months and now the real action is upon us!

The group of volunteers have just returned from a weekend away in Port Waikato to meet, plan and get excited for what promises to be an amazing experience.

Since our first donors, REHD and Playzone, chipped in with a major boost by donating playground equipment for the school in Poutasi, many others have joined in as well.

Steeline Industries have given a major donation, as well as David and Nicola Roberts. Others individual donors have also been very generous in assisting our efforts, and we thank Audrey D'Souza for her tireless efforts among her friends and contacts, especially in the parishes of St Dominics, Christ the King and St Marys Avondale.

Recently, Mike Chun from Play it Strange donated 12 ukuleles, to assist Tuatagaloa Joe Annandale's Ukulele Revolution. Tuatagaloa already has a group of keen children to learn, as well as international ukulele teachers who will be visiting over the summer. So it was great that Play it Strange could help out and provide some of the ukes for the project, and we are all very thankful to Mike and the team.

Now our focus has turned to hardware materials, and we would be grateful if any hardware stores could chip in and help us to collect all the requirements for our building project. We have a shipping container waiting to be filled with hardware materials, so please be generous!

Finally, if you are in Auckland on Sunday 12 December, you might like to come along to our Samoa Benefit Showcase, which is aimed at raising funds and for our project. There will be a whole host of local musical and comic talent on show and will be a great night out. It will be held at St Peter's College Hall in Epsom from 6-8:30pm. $10 at the door.

Stay tuned as we update this site over the next month and also during our trip to Samoa in January.

And if you know anyone who can help, you can see that our fundraising thermometer needs a little more red to get into the black!