Three Waimea schools are sporting big smiles after they were announced as the winners of the Vote for Your School promotion, run by Richmond Mall.
Appleby School are the major winners, claiming $10,000 to spend on sporting equipment, with Brightwater School finishing in second place with $3000 and Ranzau School in third with $2000.
The competition was supported by Luv’ya, a local apple growing and exporting company, Waimea Weekly, Tinline Properties and More FM.
Richmond Mall manager Belinda de Clercq was thrilled with the response to the competition.
“We had so many entries, our fingers were black counting them all!”
Votes could either be a receipt from a Richmond Mall purchase, a vote form cut out of the Waimea Weekly or a Luv’ya apple sticker. The competition ran for six weeks with 13 local schools participating.
Appleby school principal Justin Neal says the school were delighted to come out on top and thanked their community for their “awesome support”.
“We’re absolutely excited and happy to have something so significant and so big happen to us. In the times we’re living it’s nice to have a happy moment, the kids are really buzzing about it.”
The winning schools all said they would involve the students in helping to decide how to spend the money and the reception from the students has been “just brilliant”, says Belinda.
“Going to the schools was so much fun, the children were so delighted and already had some ideas of what they wanted, I’m not sure they’ll all be able to come off though, one student wanted a water park which might be a bit out of the budget.”
Luv’ya chief executive Tristan Lynch says they jumped at the chance to be a part of the promotion. “We love supporting local and particularly local sports so it was a really good fit for us.”
Waimea Weekly publisher Andrew Board says the number of votes cut out was incredible. “We’ve heard some great stories of students knocking on their neighbour’s door asking if they’ve finishing reading their Waimea Weekly so they could cut out the vote form.”
Belinda says the competition has been an overwhelming success. “I’d like to thank everyone for supporting the competition and their local schools.”
