School's longest day a lesson in helping the poor | Wairarapa News | Local News in Wairarapa

 A long day in the classroom has seen Ponatahi Christian School students praised as the best fundraisers of this year's World Vision 40-Hour Famine.

At $4138, or $60 a student, students learned last week they had made more money for the school's size than any other in New Zealand to provide food, water, health and education for some of the world's poorest people.

Organisers Rebecca Bertram, 16, Mary-Anne Evers, 17, and Hamish Hume, 16, ran a different sort of a fundraiser - rather than 40 hours without food, students endured 24 hours of non-stop school.

On Thursday, May 20, school began at 8am. Junior students were lucky. They got to go home 12 hours later - 8 o'clock that night.

For the seniors, however, the day wore on long into the night, past the small hours, and right up until 8 o'clock on Friday morning.

There were "lunch breaks, dinner breaks, snack breaks, chocolate breaks" the students recalled, and topical exercises to simulate disabilities and diseases common to poor countries.

Some wore padded jackets to raise body temperature, a symptom of malaria.

Others were blindfolded to give them the experience of blindness, while still others were strategically "maimed" by tying up a limb or two.

Aside from the games, however, lessons continued, as teachers worked in shifts to keep tired brains learning.

There was an English lesson at midnight and, horror of horrors, algebra at 6am.

Rules included no sleeping, of course, and no energy drinks, although chocolate was allowed.

"We stopped eating chocolate at 5am," Rebecca said, with all three noting that about 5am was the hardest time.

The students' achievement has netted the school a scholarship that will see one of them attending a World Vision leadership course.