Students of Rototuna Junior High School this week gifted a collection of knitting to Waikato Hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), including blankets, vests, hats, boots and teddy bears.
"In our community we've got about 100 students and we decided as part of what we were learning we would like to do some service in our local community," said Rototuna Junior High learning leader Anna Pratt.
She says some of the students at the school, and also teachers, were connected to the NICU, either having had siblings in there or been in the unit themselves, so they decided to work on knitting clothes to gift to premature babies in the unit.
NICU charge nurse manager Christine Woolerton highlighted that the babies are small, in an incubator, and don't wear clothes. She said making clothes for full-term newborn babies would be a better idea.
"She sent out a whole lot of patterns and things. Once we realised that very few of us actually knew how to knit at all, and that in itself - learning how to knit - was going to be challenging, especially for some students who are like 'I don't want to do that'. They were quite funny to start with, the reluctance in general," said Pratt.