Monday mornings are hard enough for most people, but for a group of 40 Pasifika boys from Tauranga Boys College, 6am starts for fitness, inspirational talks and breakfast are worth it.
The programme started a few months ago with just one student, but yesterday morning the Tauranga Boys gymnasium was full of teenagers performing intensive fitness tasks for an hour, with the upstairs busy with volunteers making breakfast with food donated from Bidvest Foods.
Teacher Rob Warner said the initiative was started to raise the achievement of the boys at the college.
He said the catch-phrase was, "if they can get up at 6am on a Monday morning, they can do anything".
Ati Aaifou-Olive, who spent yesterday morning putting the teenagers through their paces with shuttle-runs and games, thought up the idea with his wife, Charlie Aaifou-Olive, and parent Naomi Gardiner-Hano.