The Rotary Club of Wanaka has teamed up with rotary clubs in Cromwell and Alexandra to support a school in the Cook Islands by stocking its shelves full of books.

The Apii Nikao school in the Cook Islands was built two years ago and its library has no shelving and no books, a fact uncovered after a chance meeting between the local club’s president and Rotary Club of Rarotonga president Greg Amos.

“Greg told us that their rotary club had put some books into a medical centre waiting room for people to swap and drop. He said that many villages do not have public libraries and that the Cook Islands government had a goal to improve literacy rates,” Rotary Club of Wanaka president Deb Budden said.

Rotary Club of Wanaka member Alan Richardson visited the Cook Islands and met with the Rotary Club of Rarotonga who introduced him to Apii Nikao School.

“From there the idea just blossomed,” Deb said. “We knew we had to do something so we engaged with the rotary clubs in Alexandra and Cromwell and sought a grant from our Rotary District. 

Next minute we had $11,000 and more books than we knew what to do with”.

Around 600 new books were purchased for the Apii Nikao school library and two pallets of quality secondhand books have also been shipped to the Cook Islands to use in ‘Lilliput’ libraries (community book exchanges).

On arrival in Rarotonga the Rotary Club of Rarotonga will fix promotional decals (printed in Central Otago) to commercial glass fronted fridges which will house the secondhand books for the book exchange scheme in the villages.

“There’s about 40 banana boxes of books on each pallet holding about 1,600 books,” Rotary Club of Wanaka’s foundation committee incoming director Nicola Brown said. 

Apii Nikao school principal Elizabeth Kapi said her school’s parent teacher association was excited to receive “this huge and generous donation”.

“On behalf of all our students, teachers and school community, meitaki maata for this wonderful gift,” Elizabeth said.

The Apii Nikao school community will install shelving in the school’s library to house the new books. 

“These will be a huge start to the school’s library collection,” Deb said.