Canterbury school sells 10,000 blocks of butter in fundraiser
A primary school in Canterbury has turned to the buttery bullion instead of fundraising favourites such as chocolate or cookies.
Leithfield School Te Kura o Kowai, a primary school north of Christchurch has been selling 250 gram blocks of butter for $4.
It's a bargain compared to some supermarket butter blocks that are more than $10 for 500 grams, depending on the brand.
The school's principal Rob Cavanagh told RNZ the interest in the butter had been overwhelming over the past few weeks.
"Our fundraising team thought it was going to be a bit of a small earner, maybe bring in a few a few dollars and sell a few 100 blocks of butter. But we got that one completely wrong and it's been super popular."
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He said it started after a parent in the school's fundraising team came across the Westland dairy fundraising page.
"On there was just an opportunity to sell some butter and they thought, 'hey, let's give it a go and hopefully we'll sell a few blocks and bring in a little bit of money'."
In total, the school has sold more than 10,000 blocks of butter.
"It's turned into what we thought would be a minor operation into a rather large-scale logistical operation."
Interest has come from as far as Hawke's Bay and the Bay of Plenty, from comments on their Facebook page.
"[It's] well and truly out of the reach of our small team of volunteers in terms of the distribution here from school. It is a local thing for us, and we're pleased to know that there are lots of people in our local area that are taking up the opportunity and able to give a bit back to the school at the same time."
From each block of butter sold, the school makes a dollar. The funds go into different aspects of the school, including subsidising some start of the year costs for families, he said.
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"We're bringing our stationery costs right down at the start of the year [and] we're able to help with the shortfall in costs for school camps. All of our camps happen in term 1 and we always have a bit of a shortfall when we come to taking the money from donations that come in and the board's operation funding.
"We're purchasing new Kapa Haka uniforms for our senior Kapa haka group. We're sending some of our senior students on leadership opportunities and we're buying some resources for our new writing programme we're using this year as well."
The school was selling butter until 5pm on May 30.
rnz.co.nz
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