Young tycoons hone sweet tooth for charity

19th June 2010

Using Wairarapa flavours, Kiwi ingenuity and home-grown creativity a team of young Masterton tycoons this week kick-started a Ronald McDonald House street appeal, with more than $500 squared away for the charity.
The Solway Primary School-based Learn Now confectioners were (back row from left) Julian Fawcett, 11, Zack Saba, 11, and Calum Ordish, 11, (middle row) Vanessa Parkinson, 11, with Callum Riatch, 10, handing the cash to Ronald McDonald House beneficiary Glen Bunny, and Learn Now teacher Jo Gibson and (front row) Madison Carson, 11, Erin Charnoch, 11, project manager Claudia Field, 12, Jack Murphy, 11, and Lily Nicholls, 11.
The savvy squad mixed fresh raspberries with lashings of melted chocolate, a sprinkling of icing sugar, hints of coconut and a sniff of almond essence to score a mouth-watering $520 in cash for Ronald McDonald House in Wellington.
The charity was chosen by Vanessa Parkinson, whose dad will be staying at Ronald McDonald House while her older sister undergoes treatment to correct a crooked spine.
''Ronald McDonald House is nice that they're letting my dad stay there while my sister's in hospital,'' Vanessa says.
On the outskirts of Masterton, at ChocLot Paradise the Chocolate Factory, the ''staff'' of 13 became the proud designers and developers of a range of chocolate products.

StickY FingerZ, StickY DropZ and Caramel BiteZ were launched and from the outset the group was empowered to pocket a majority share of business profits, and had the liberty of choosing a charity for the balance.
Ms Gibson said her young charges began with nothing more than the mandate of making a new chocolate product.
''Each individual was selected on the basis of work ethic, exceptional academic performance within their field and emerging gifted qualities.
''They initially operated as individuals with just an inkling of how else they may grow and interact with life.
''Their challenge was to combine their skills, talents and creative edges to form a cohesive and collaborative team, in pursuit of a common goal _ initially, the only endearment toward each other was the whiff of anticipated chocolate and money - _ team talk and mutual support was a seriously foreign concept,'' she said. Eventually, though, the recipe for success proved to be a mix of e-learning, e-commerce and flexible, learner-centred learning.
Learn-Now, a national award winning e-learning service for schools around New Zealand, was the driver of the programme.
Learn-Now was adopted by Solway Primary School's Principal Gail Marshall since 2007 as one of the school's extension programmes.
Every year, teams of middle to senior school students are enrolled in the programme, where broad, open-ended enrichment and extension challenges bring global and community horizons together.
However, the ChocLot Paradise project was the first time Learn Now had supported a New Zealand-based charity.