Congratulations to Kees Hooper-Whiti who recently competed along with 29 other New Zealanders in the Australian Taekwon Do Nationals at a two day event in Sydney. Kees entered 6 different events.  He came fourth in individual patterns, gained a bronze medal in team sparring, a silver medal in team patterns and a gold medal for individual power. Going to Australia was a wonderful experience for Kees, and gave him a taste of what it could be like if he made the New Zealand team to compete in the World Championships in Ireland next year.

Congratulations to Hannah Wedlock in Year 12.  She has won the top prize at the Arts Society exhibition over the weekend! Students from the local colleges were invited to display their work at the two day event.  The Horowhenua College Art Department entered over 50 folios alone, and we in the department are thrilled that Hannah has received the top prize.  Hannah is an extremely talented and gifted Art student.  This year she completed three Art folios in Painting, Design and Photography. This is a huge achievement, one that she should be very pround of.  Well done Hannah! Jeanette Gilroy Head of Faculty Arts

On Wednesday 6 and Thursday 7 of July, a group of 32 students plus parents, tutors and teachers went to Palmerston North to compete in the regional Pasifika Fusion Competition.  This competition includes twelve categories and Horowhenua College Pasifika students competed in eleven of these.  The aim of this competition is to ‘fuse’ the students of different Pacific Islands into a cohesive group to celebrate their different cultures and encourage pride.   The confidence gained carries over into higher expectations of educational success.  The theme this year was Pacific Leadership. Eighteen colleges competed and Horowhenua College came second overall!!  This was incredibly exciting. RESULTS: 3rd = in Senior Speech – English: Sina Crichton 2nd in Cinematography: Felix Ulu Kini 2nd in Senior Speech – English: Paul Sao 2nd in Senior Speech – Samoan: Olive Penetekoso-Faumuina 2nd in Wearable Arts: Meleofa Finau 2nd in Quiz: Team – Olive Penetekoso-Faumuina, Belinda Crichton, Paul…

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Two Horowhenua College students have travelled through the ranks of the Girl Guide movement and have now received their Queen’s Guide Awards. Sarah Benseman and Kylie Smith have grown up side-by-side from the age of 7 years old when Kylie first joined the movement.  Since then they have perservered through the ranks and are now qualified leaders. The two girls recently ran an advocacy project in the community to raise awareness about people who struggle in times of need. This project was the last criteria they needed to complete in order to gain their Queen’s Guide Award and graduate into leadership positions. They chose the Levin Combined Church Foodbank as their project.  Kylie Smith said the Levin Foodbank was a very worthy choice for their advocacy project.  “We knew there were a lot of people struggling to feed their families”.  The girls raised awareness and also funds for the foodbank,…

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Ayvran Mackie as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, has been selected for the National Shakespeare Schools Production.  Congratulations Ayvran!  Thank you to everyone who supported Team Shakespeare this year.  The road to the Glob begins now.

Congratulations and well done to our seven Year 9 Scholarship winners for 2016.  They are:  Ethan Roentgen (Academic), Sam Anderson (Sport), Isaac Bishop (Academic), Jamie Harper (Academic), Jared Davis (Sport), Brianna Chow (Arts) and Oliver Bau (Arts).

Horowhenua College won the prestigious Sheilah Winn Cup for the first time in the college’s history.  Our 15 minute scene of “Much Ado About Nothing” was a multi-cultural highlight of the recent Regional competition held here at college.  The team have been invited to perform at the National SGCNZ University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival.

We are looking for school families to support our international programme by hosting a student next year.  This can either be short term, for example, two weeks, or long term from 6 months to one year. We have approximately 50 homes currently on our books but are expecting 5 short term visits next year (in addition to our long term students) so we need to increase the number of host families to accommodate the visiting students.  Our biggest group from Japan will be visiting in October, bringing 40 students for five days. Our international students particularly enjoy staying with a family where there are children.  If you have a spare bedroom and an interest to welcome an international student into your family, we would love to hear from you.  If you know of others in the community who would be interested, please talk to them about this also. After an…

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