Students of Chanel College and St. Peter Chanel Primary School at Moamoa have plenty to smile about this week after receiving donations from multiple New Zealand-based good Samaritans.

The furniture and school resources were donated by Manurewa High School and the Evangelist Catholic School in Otara, New Zealand. Other donations include a 7s rugby uniform and training gear donated by Moana Pasefika Super Rugby Franchise through its CEO Pelenato Sakalia, Kevin Senio and Felise Senio. 

Mr. Sakalia is the nephew of Chanel College’s current principal Aleki Silao and Kevin Senio is the former All Blacks and Assistant Coach while Felise Senio is the son of a former Chanel old student. 

In addition to the donation are 40 rugby balls, tackle bags and hit shields donated by Papatoetoe Rugby Football Club in Auckland.

Given the donations were collected in New Zealand, it was the Chanel Old Students Association (C.O.S.A.) in Auckland that collected and loaded the items into a 40ft container. 

C.O.S.A. President, Savea Taipi Morris said this is the second 40ft container from New Zealand that contains school resources. 

The resources include 160 student desks, 25 office tables for the library and office, more than 100 chairs, 30 high benches and 30 stools for the Science lab with many more filing cabinets and metal shelving for the library. There were more than 40 boxes full of resource books, reading materials and journals all donated by Manurewa High School and Evangelist Catholic School in Otara. 

In a press statement, Savea said the contents of the first container was halved between St. Peter Chanel Primary School and Chanel College. 

“Again we are planning to split the same with the contents of the current container,” he said. 

In June this year, Chanel College, Moamoa received the first container (20ft) of used school resources and materials including desks, chairs, white boards, filing cabinets, danske mobilers, bookshelves, display units, office chairs, computer workstations, 36 bays laptops recharge centre for the IT Lab and 3 overhead protectors.

According to the C.O.S.A President the freight cost of 40ft container which is NZ$11,806 was kindly funded by the Matson Group Foundation as their in-kind support community work.