NZ Refugee Centre visit

Friday, 5th December 2025 at 8:05am

NZ Refugee Centre school visit: Te Angitu Ngātahi - working together to create empowering moments.

Written by Techin Tapaneeyaturong, Dagna Ubillus Centeno and Neehan Bashar (ELA2 students)

On Wednesday, over 30 refugee students and staff from the Māngere Refugee Resettlement Center (MRRC)’s school came to visit our school for a tour. We gave them a warm welcome, then we separated into five groups led by student Tour Guides from our school. They started exploring different parts of our school, and they got to do activities in each location around the school, including Careers, Wellbeing, the Health Centre and PE. We all had lunch together, before they headed back to the Center in the afternoon.

We want to acknowledge the incredible work from our ESOL students who took the responsibility as the Tour Guides in multiple languages. They did an amazing job hosting the tour and demonstrating our school values with confidence and pride.

We are looking forward to hosting another tour in the future!

• Mohsen Ebrahimi and Taha Rezvani (Afghan) spoke and translated Farsi, Dhari, Pashto and English for Afghan and Somali males).
• Klara Abdelhadi (Egyptian), Michelle Ding (Chinese), Ayesha Vhiell Castillo (Filipino) and Techin Tapaneeyaturong (Thai) spoke in Arabic and English for Syrian students).
• Azlaan Khalid (Pakistani) and Neehan Bashar (Bangladeshi) spoke in English and Urdu for Muslim males).
• Felipe Mosquera Garces and Dagna Ubillus Centeno (Latin Amercian) spoke in Spanish for Venezuelan males and English for Somali and Democratic Republic of the Congo for females).
• Sara Karimzad (Afghan) and Euniesther Vaurasi (Pasifika) spoke Farsi, Dhari and English for Afghan females).
• Ali Haider (Pakistani, Punjabi) supported Simon with the PE activity with his translation skills.

A heartfelt thank-you to everyone who contributed to making the visit meaningful and memorable.