Life at school will soon be a lot easier for a lot of children in East Timor. And it’s because some of our local Cooroy students started thinking inside the box.

Cooroy State School students assembled hundreds of educational care parcels to go to the children of Sao Miguel (St. Michael) at Raikotu - a school about 30 minutes west of Dili. The school has about 150 kindergarten students and some 250 of primary school age. But the area also caters for other schools that are in need of basic educational supplies.

With the help of Bendigo Bank and the Rotary Clubs of Noosa and Cooroy, Sao Miguel was identified ten years ago as a community school with no help from the Ministry of Education in Timor. Each parcel donated by the kids from Cooroy State School will be a decorated shoe box with enclosed items including exercise books, rulers, erasers, pens and pencils, all topped off with a personal item from each student to the child opening it at the other end.

What’s more impressive is that the 360 boxes filled in 2017 and the  600 shoe boxes collected from Cooroy in 2016 will join one thousand others from Tewantin and Pacific Paradise State Schools to create a shipment that will change the lives of 1,500 kids.

Past President Linda Morrell said, “It is wonderful to be a part of such a superb humanitarian event. The Rotary Club of Cooroy will get our whole hearted support for years to come.”

LAUNCH OF 2017 SHOEBOX 
Cooroy State School

For the tenth straight year, Cooroy State School will partner the Cooroy Community Bank branch of Bendigo Bank and Rotary Clubs of Cooroy and Noosa in delivering shoe boxes to those less fortunate than ourselves.

Once they are delivered, the students of Sao Miguel, East Timor (only 30 minutes west of the capital city, Dili) will receive hundreds of shoe boxes from our local students who will have taken the time and effort to make a difference. In the next few weeks, each student will decorate then fill a shoe box filled exercise books, rulers, erasers, pens and pencils as well as a personal item.

On Thursday, June 15 students brought along their shoe boxes to parade and Rotary and Bendigo Bank will do the rest with local moving company, Noosa Van Lines to get them to East Timor.