Listen: 'Moostery Challenge' connects urban and rural kids

Photo / File

What do you get when you cross a dairy-themed challenge for school kids and a love of puns? DairyNZ's CLASS-ified Moostery Challenge!

DairyNZ's Strategy and Investment Leader for Farm Performance, Jenny Jago spoke to The Country Early Edition's Rowena Duncum about the challenge, which aims to build awareness and understanding between rural and urban schools.

The CLASS-ified Moostery Challenge works as follows: 150 rural and 150 urban schools are paired up and challenged to work out each other's name and location, while getting to know more about each other.

Listen below:

"It's a fun way for children to get more awareness and understanding of people in rural areas and people in urban areas," says Jago.

Each school carries out detective work, (such as Skype conversations and photo examination), to help them identify and locate their mystery match.

This is the third year the challenge has run and Jago says some schools keep in contact through a pen pal programme.

"The children realise that while there are some differences, there actually are a lot of similarities as well ... definitely some of those schools have kept in touch, which is really cool."

Information for teachers on how to run the challenge is available on the School Kit website at www.schoolkit.co.nz.

To find out more about DairyNZ's involvement in education visit dairynz.co.nz/education.