Financial Recipients 2009
Fairfax First Books
Fairfax First Books is a charity established by Fairfax Media in 2006 to improve the reading levels of under five year olds in disadvantaged communities and promote reading within their families.
Through Fairfax First Books, each child who attends a low decile kindergarten in New Zealand receives one book each term to take home and keep. There are nearly 4,500 New Zealand children who attend these qualifying kindergartens, which is around 18,000 books per year.
Thanks to Fairfax Media and Round the Bays funding, the programme is again taking place in 2009 and has grown with many more kindergartens around the country now receiving books each term.
Fairfax First Books is an excellent tool for giving children the best possible start to their literacy, providing them with books of their own that can be enjoyed for many years to come.
The Gifted Kids Programme
The Gifted Kids Programme was co-founded by Christine Fernyhough and Craig Anderson in September 2000 to provide a day a week programme of excellence in gifted education, mainly for children from low-income families. GKP now has eight one day units catering for over 550 children from more than 130 contributing schools throughout the North Island.
The Gifted Kids Programme is committed to meeting the 'special needs' of gifted children. Historically a high proportion of education funding, resources and direction has gone towards children with learning difficulties, while few opportunities have been made available for gifted children.
Gifted Kids are special needs children. The charity aims to maximise the potential for these students to contribute to the future economic and creative productivity of New Zealand society, because if these kids achieve their huge potential, then so too will New Zealand.
Hearing House
The Hearing House is a charity for deaf children and their families, which aims to enable deaf or hearing impaired children to listen and speak. The overall goal is to give deaf children the ability to fulfil their potential and live an independent life in a hearing and speaking world.
The mission of The Hearing House is to achieve miracles for children with a hearing loss. Today, for the first time, even children who are profoundly deaf can have access to sound thanks to scientific advances in hearing aids and the development of cochlear implants. Whether the child learns to understand this sound, fulfil their hearing potential and develop spoken language depends on whether they receive an advanced and specialised therapy called Auditory-Verbal Therapy.
Auditory-Verbal Therapy accelerates the natural way a child would develop language to enable deaf children with a cochlear implant or hearing aid to catch up on the years of listening and language development he or she missed out on before receiving the hearing device.
The aim of Auditory-Verbal Therapy is for the child to speak clearly and naturally like their hearing peers and to attend mainstream school by age five. In later life the child will experience enhanced education and employment opportunities; enhanced social independence and quality of life; and will be able to fully participate in, and contribute to, mainstream society.
Youthline
A significant donation was made to Youthline, which has been helping young New Zealanders and their families since 1970, having developed a community-based approach to the development and delivery of services for young people. Youthline's vision is to create communities that relate to the needs of young people, respond to them, and support them to achieve their potential. The organisation is not just for young people at risk. It provides development pathways for the many young people who want to help their peers and communities in positive, practical ways. Visit www.youthline.co.nz to find out more.
