New Zealand Exchange Program

On Monday 15th April 2024, Braeburn School senators and sixth form students hosted a team of students and teachers from Celestielle Charitable Trust, New Zealand.

Celestielle seeks to broaden the worldview of young New Zealanders by providing meaningful international travel experiences. Recipients return home with a profound sense of intercultural appreciation, and a renewed dedication to spreading the word about travel and tolerance at home.

The students selected for this trip all come from extremely disadvantaged households in New Zealand and have been hand-selected by Paul, the Victory Boxing organisation's director who accompanied them. Victory Boxing was set up with the aim of having a positive impact on young kids in the community, teaching them life skills, honesty, respect, determination and to be caring. It is made up of a fantastic team of volunteers who help out with after-school programs, offering support and mentorship to the youth who attend. For more information on who and what Victory Boxing is please click here.

The New Zealand exchange student program was an eventful day for all. We were given the chance to share information about our academic programmes, our vibrant community service projects, to show them around the school, how it works and how life is as a Braeburn student. We were also able to learn about New Zealand culture, language, hobbies and many more from them as well as how life is in their country on a day to day basis. We also taught them about some of the culture Kenya has to offer.

It was a very enjoyable experience for all the senators, students and teachers who were involved and we hope for the next one to be even more successful. We were joined by some happy children from Tabasamu, they made an excellent presentation. They were grateful that our community service team had raised money in order to buy hem shoes.

Emmanuel

Head senator