Twenty eight students from Tauranga Intermediate have reaped the rewards of their fundraising efforts and spent two weeks in South Africa.

Along with four teachers, the students flew to South Africa at the end of November as part of a cultural exchange the school goes on every two years.

Tauranga Intermediate student Hunta Davies during her trip to South Africa. Photo: Supplied.

Teacher Annemieke Hart says normally they go to Egypt, but because of the unrest this year they decided to visit South Africa.

'Every two years we go on a cultural exchange and it's just to make students aware of global connections, which is something the Education Ministry says we need to be aware of in our curriculum.”

Annemieke says they have a school they go to as part of the exchange programme.

'We visited very poor schools, and kids performed. We took a little Kapa Haka group with us.

'It was a very good eye opener for our children.”
She says during this year's trip, they visited the prison where Nelson Mandela was kept.

'They (the students) learnt a lot about apartheid and what it was like in those times for the black and the white people.

'We went to schools where they had bars on the windows – that was very unfamiliar with our children.”

Annemieke says at one school they visited, the kids just hugged them as they gave them little gifts.

'A lot of them were orphaned and had been brought up by the town as their parents had died of aids or something.”
She says another thing which surprised the students was their visit at the Safari Park.

'The animals, seeing the lions up close like a metre away from them.

'We stopped at Dubai on the way home and of course going into the desert and going for camel rides.”

All the funds for the trip came from the students who spent a large portion of the year fundraising.