Hughes Education Fund
Chris and Marg Hughes
Every child in Fiordland deserves the chance to reach their potential.
Chris Hughes started school in Te Anau in 1963. He finished school at Manapouri High in 1968, back when the town was a fraction of the size it is now.
Marg arrived in 1975 as the school dental nurse and found reason to stay.
Between them they have spent a lifetime in Fiordland and in the rural sector, first running a contracting business and later farming deer. They have watched the district change, and they have watched what stays the same. Fiordland is a long way from most things. That distance shapes everything, including what it costs a family to get help for a child.
The Hughes Education Fund began with one of their own. A grandson needed support for a learning difficulty, and the family set out to get it for him. What they found was not a shortage of goodwill but a shortage of access. Assessments meant travel and qualified tuition meant more travel. The costs added up quickly, and none of them had anything to do with the help itself.
Chris and Marg came away thinking about the families who could not absorb that cost. A child whose learning difference is identified early can be understood, taught differently, and supported by systems that already exist. A child who is never assessed simply falls behind, and the reasons why are never named.
“We were in the position to support our family, but not everyone is, and that stayed with us. We know what the outcome is when kids and their families struggle to get the help they need. It follows each child for years.”
So, they have established the Hughes Education Fund with the Southland Foundation. Its purpose is to improve educational outcomes for children in Fiordland, particularly those who experience learning differences, by reducing the barriers to being identified early and getting the right support. Chris and Marg have built it to last, and to change as it needs to, because how children learn and what stands in their way will not stay the same over the decades ahead.
"Assessed early, a child learns differently and gets on with it. Left too long, the child concludes school is not for him, and that conclusion is a lot harder to shift than the learning difference ever was."
What will not change is the belief behind it. Every child in this region deserves the opportunity to reach their potential, and no child should miss out because of the distance between Te Anau and a specialist's door.