How Excitement!!!

[KerrynN]

OMG!!! I am soooooo excited! My kids school has been participating in the Canteen Rescue competition across Australia which is sponsored by Thermomix. I think that there are two winning schools in the country, each receives $40 000 for a canteen make over and A THERMOMIX!!!

Guess what?!?!?! We WON!!!!! And so we should have too. I know of parents who were taking their kids up to our local shopping centre to scour the car park and trolleys for receipts, as well as walking through the shopping centre looking at the ground to pick up any stray ones. Some kids stationed themselves at the supermarket checkouts to ask people for their receipts as they left too. My kids did all of this, plus crawl around on the ground at the supermarket checkouts grabbing receipts from under the checkouts as well.

I'm soooo excited! Amongst our parent community we have two consultants (that I am aware of), plus at least 6 TMX owners. So we will be able to start off using our new school Thermie as soon as it arrives. I think we will need to run a competition to see what we make first.... Chocolate custard for the kids... Anzac biscuits... cheese and bacon rolls... mini cheesecakes.... so many choices

[cookie1]

Kerryn that is truly wonderful. Congratulations to your school and all the kids who looked for the dockets. It is so exciting when this sort of thing happens.

[Halex]

How absolutely wonderful.

Great news, most school canteens need a refit. Ours does.

Hally

[judydawn]

Fantastic news Kerryn - bet the kids are so excited after all their efforts. Hadn't even heard of this competition.

[Cornish Cream]

Congratulations on the school winning the competition Kerryn.The kids must be so excited.Can I just ask why they collected the receipts?

[CreamPuff63]

Supermarkets do this to encourage people to shop in their stores in aid of sponsoring/donating something to local schools. Whichever school collects the most wins the bounty.

[Cornish Cream]

Thanks CP.We have a similar scheme here, with the supermarkets but you collect a voucher for every £10 you spend.Schools can then cash them in for equipment they need.

[KerrynN]

This competition runs from April to June and involves collecting as many receipts from stores in the shopping centre as possible. Our local shopping center is Forest Hill and it is part of a bigger competition being run nationally. The winning school from each shopping centre won $3000 and then the top two nationally got $40000 and a TMX.

Thermomix Aust was one of the competition sponsors and the theme was around eating fresh food, so the tie in was clear. Each week there was an email sent to schools with the "leaderboard" and two recipes, one of which was a TMX one. To further encourage the healthy eating and fresh food angle receipts from the fresh food stores (actual fresh food, not just marketed as such) like butchers, green grocers, bakers, etc were doubled and Tuesday was also double points day. I ended up changing my shopping habits considerably - only shopped on Tuesday and stopped buying fresh fruit, veg and meat from supermarket. I can certainly see the benefits for the shopping centre from our school!

Sadly, it would seem that our local consultants weren't told about the sponsorship till quite late into the competition so didn't get to leverage it as well as they would have liked I think. At least now they will get to expose the whole school community to the wonders of the TMX! I can see some great opportunities with parent morning teas, etc.

[cookie1]

I'm sure you will. Maybe the canteen ladies could even put the machine where the children could see it working and they would then want smoothies etc made in the machine. I feel sorry for the Mum's of the school who don't have one as the children will nag them. It could even be taken round to the classes during school time and the children could see say a smoothie being made and then have a free sample. Purely to show them what will now be available in the canteen-not to sell the machines.
The possibilities are endless.

[KerrynN]

Cookie we also have a really great kitchen garden program running too, with the Grade 3 and 4 classes taking it in turns to work in the garden and/or cook with the garden produce. I am sure they will be able to use it in this setting too, once we teach the person taking the classes how to do so. This program uses parent helpers too, so they will be able to see how it works.

I am sure that the teachers will be able to think of great uses too, as part of their classes. My grade 4 boy made chocolate cake in his literacy class, the youngest has made salad (remember good old Mrs Nicholls' salad?), pancakes and cupcakes so far this year alone.

The possibilities really are endless...

[meganjane]

I love the concept of promoting the fresh food stores! So many competitions are through the big supermarkets.

Congratulations!

[trudy]

Congratulations!!

[MGlatte]

Wow! How exciting.

[KerrynN]

I found out today that we actually get TWO Thermomixes, plus $25000 worth of solar panels. Not sure exactly what the rest of the $40000 goes toward. Apparently we have a Thermomix chef coming on Friday to cook stuff up for a few kids as a promo of the competition. I will be very interested to see what s/he makes... I plan on heading up there for a sticky beak.

Kerryn

[judydawn]

Wow, double the excitement - how fantastic is that going to be.