PWSA Family Support Camp – Taupō, March 2025

In March this year, we returned to MiCamp Taupō where we were treated to lakeside sunshine once again. This was our largest camp to date with 94 people registering to attend.

This year our 4 activity groups formed ‘teams’ and competed for duck points! They participated in rifles, disc-golf, pumice carving, scavenger hunting, water activities in the lake, building boats, and top team games.

On Friday evening everyone learned about our solar system during a new night time astronomy session. Our groups all came together again on Saturday afternoon for a visit to Turtle Pools in Turangi, and this was followed by the ever-popular talent show and bingo on Saturday night.

After Sunday lunch it was time to say a sad goodbye after such a fun time reconnecting with friends and making new ones. Parents really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with each other and share ideas, information, problems and strategies.

Thank you to everyone for helping out with duties and a big thank you to the parent volunteers who helped lead activities. Thank you once again to MiCamp for hosting us and adapting the catering so well for us, and a huge thank you to our camp organising committee for planning and running the camp: Hayley Arnott, Jeanette Mabin, Julie-anne Quinney, Wendy Roberts, and Kahu Simmonds.

We are extremely grateful to The Lion Foundation ($4000) and to Aotearoa Gaming Trust ($3000) for their funding contributions toward our camp which made it possible. With our growing camp numbers and the rising cost of running camps, it will be increasingly important to further our fundraising efforts to make future camps possible. Our overall camp costs were just under $23,500, with registration contributions and grant funding covering approximately half of this amount.