Seasons greetings from Lift Education!

‘From all of us here at Lift Education – we wish you the warmest of seasons greetings.
Have an amazing Christmas, and a wonderful new year!

As you’ll know, we were evacuated from our building just after November’s earthquake.

While work continued as normal (albeit from cafes and office spaces all over wider Wellington), we’re very pleased to let you know we have set up camp in the Hope Gibbons building on the corner of Dixon Street and Taranaki Street until early 2017. Come and see us!

Earthquakes aside, it’s been a great year for us at Lift Education.

Here are some highlights from 2016:
(in no particular order!)

1. In May, Susan and Bernadette visited Parihaka to celebrate the publication of “Ngā Tātarakihi o Parihaka” by Lucy Bailey – a story in the Level 4 School Journal May 2016. It was a special morning. Susan’s favourite memory was “watching everyone dive into the story while we were still in the wharenui. People sat on mattresses on the floor, leaning against walls covered in framed photos of their tīpuna. I wondered if anyone in those photos had actually been at Parihaka as a young child during the government raid. We visited on the same day as Andrew Judd, at the time the mayor of New Plymouth. After lunch, he dried the dishes. Bernadette and I thought that was pretty good.”
2. Ready to Read – following on from last year’s success of Stick Insects and Camouflage, we produced three non-fiction big books on behalf of the Ministry of Education. Will They Float?, New Zealand Birds and Bread are proving very popular with teachers and students alike!
3. IBBY Congress – we represented both the Ministry of Education and CSI Literacy at the IBBY congress in Auckland with two amazing stands. For the MoE, we showcased the many New Zealand writers and illustrators whose work has been published across the Instructional Series – Ready to Read, Junior Journal, School Journal and Connected.
4. In March, CSI Literacy launched CSI Private Eye, an awesome online literacy resource. We’re super proud of it, and it’s proving a success – there are currently 18,500 students using CSI Private Eye all over the world!
5. We developed a 4-book anthology of stories and poems for young people from the 53 countries of the Commonwealth for the Commonwealth Education Trust, A River of Stories. It was received well, and even shortlisted for a book award in the UK!
6. We’ve spent the last two years developing 99 dual-language books in Pasifika languages and English for the Ministry of Education. It’s a huge suite of resources that includes teacher and family support material, and over 200 audio files – and there are more to come! It’s designed to support teachers and families to build on the early reading experiences and skills that Pasifika children bring to school. We were proud to attend the launch in Auckland in December.

See you in 2017 – onward and upward!