(Click on the image if you would like the glorious, full-size version.)

Room 4 supported Blake’s “Sweat for COTAP” campaign

In August 2017, Blake Richardson of Auckland signed up to “Sweat for COTAP,” which is how we refer to our endurance event fundraising program.  Blake’s a Year 4 teacher at Silverdale Primary School and he reached out to his friends at the Mairangi Bay School as part of his fundraising campaign.

Blake’s fundraising request found its way to Ms. Kathryn Hohaia, whose class in Mairangi Bay’s Room 4 had been studying global issues, how everyone is connected, and global poverty.  In response to their learning, Room 4 had decided to do a series of fundraising events and donate the proceeds to poverty charities of their choice.

Ms. Hohaia explained Blake’s campaign and COTAP to her class, and they watched several of the COTAP project videos.  Though most of the children had already a set idea in their mind as to what charity they were fundraising for before Blake’s email arrived, they voted to direct 25% of their mufti day (a specific fundraising day… “mufti day” explained here) proceeds to COTAP! We are truly humbled to have been included on their list alongside much older and larger global poverty charities like UNICEF, World Vision, and Oxfam.  If you look closely in the picture above, you’ll find a faint “COTAP” written on the right of the students’ poster announcing their impressive fundraising achievement.

Room 4’s Impressive Fundraising Achievement

Overall, Room 4 raised NZ$ 1,763 (about US$ 1,202), including US$ 130 for COTAP!  As we’ve noted in our recent Expedia press release and elsewhere, COTAP transparently pays projects US$ 9.00 per tonne and the Plan Vivo carbon standard requires that projects share at least 60% of carbon revenues with participating communities.  So, COTAP’s friends in Room 4 not only offset 13.13 tonnes of CO2 emissions, but they also generated US$ 70.91 in income for rural communities in Nicaragua, Uganda, and India!

An article by Room 4’s Shreya Shrestha (age 10)

Room 4 students wrote articles about their journey, and their teacher Ms. Hohaia forwarded this one by Shreya Shrestha along with permission share it:

Kids Help People in Poverty

Mairangi Bay School has been studying the topic, Global World but one class in particular has chosen to focus on one of the biggest global issues, POVERTY. However, in the last two weeks of term 3 Room 4 decided to take it one step further by actually fundraising for poverty charities such as World Vision, Unicef, Oxfam, COTAP, CPAG, Kids Can, Salvation Army and Auckland City Mission. The students organised a mufti day, created items to sell for a craft stall, baked cookies, muffins and slices for a bake sale and also run two hot chocolate and lemonade stands. They successfully raised almost $1800 dollars.

With the money Room 4 raised, their teacher, Kathryn Hohaia has divided it between the class and each student has been able to give to their poverty charity of choice.  “I feel proud to have been part of this fundraising because I have helped some of the people in poverty,” said Davin Yuan.  “Poverty is a worldwide issue but if we all work together we can stop it” said Tyna Morrison.

With lots of hard work and a great goal we can all do something great.

Thank you Room 4 for getting us one step closer to stopping poverty.

Thanks again, Room 4! You Rock!

Love,
COTAP