On May of 2017 a very special thing happened – after 2 years of hard work and many trials and disappointments we opened the doors of our fledgling school on Waiheke Island. By far the biggest challenge of our project was finding a venue and with land being at a premium here on Waiheke this proved difficult. Six months earlier we had a local community hall lined up as a venue and at a very late stage found out our resource consent would be publicly notified, the costs would be prohibitive, along with no guaranteed outcome! We had already invested two years of time, energy and fundraising efforts and we were feeling very nearly ready to give up. However the spiritual world had other plans and we had an offer at the eleventh hour from a wonderful Steiner family to have our school established on their land as a temporary measure. As karma would have it, the land is the place that currently houses our kindergartens and was home to a Steiner Home school Group many years previously. All of a sudden – almost overnight – we had a home for our school and the next thing was to find teachers! Alas no more, our teachers heard the children calling and they came. We have been so fortunate to have teachers and a community of parents, who have enthusiastically embraced the huge learning curve of what it is to be a Steiner School. Finally here we are. We are a school, we are a community, we are a family. Now we face our next huge challenge – we have our venue only for a temporary time and we need to raise funds to find ourselves a permanent home. We are reaching out to the wider community to help us with this in any way possible. If you can help please contact us at office@waiheke.steiner.school.nz or phone Tania Aroha-Twentyman 027 688 9204