Primary schools throughout New Zealand got an early dose of festive cheer as the first shipment of Kiwi books donated by Telecom and Scholastic arrived on their doorstep.
In all, some 10,000 books were donated under Telecom’s ‘Bills to Storybooks’ initiative with 1,802 primary schools across the country receiving free copies of well known Kiwi classics such as Little Yellow Digger, There’s a Hole in my Bucket, and Grandma McGarvey.
Jason Paris, Chief Marketing Officer at Telecom, said that the response from Telecom’s customers had been overwhelming.
“We’re absolutely thrilled with how our customers have got behind this initiative to support reading at their local schools.
“Since we launched the campaign back in September, more than 10,000 of our customers opted to switch to online billing and nominated a primary school to receive a storybook. This is a great result for Kiwi kids throughout New Zealand and the success of the campaign also means that we’ve been able to significantly reduce the amount of paper used to print customer’s bills,” he said.
Scholastic New Zealand provided a cross section of some 100 books written by New Zealand authors to be delivered to primary schools in time for Christmas.
Scholastic New Zealand’s General Manager, Neil Welham said: “We firmly believe that promoting a love of reading amongst young children has massive benefits for their development. The Bills to Storybooks initiative is a fantastic and innovate way of doing this and we’re delighted to have partnered with Telecom in bringing this about.”
The Bills to Storybooks campaign also provided Telecom customers a chance to help write a collaborative children’s story with award-winning children’s author Kyle Mewburn, and illustrator, Donovan Bixley. Customers who switched to online billing were invited to contribute a line with the eleven best lines being used in the storybook to be launched in February next year.
All the royalties from the sale of the new collaborative book will go to the Telecom Foundation to support charitable and community-based initiatives that contribute to a better future for Kiwi kids.
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