The school secured funding to pay for a cabin kitset and coffee cart, creating a chance for students to build skills needed in the local community.
Assistant principal Sarah Hill said the biggest step was to understand that not all people learnt best inside a classroom.
"We wanted to have real hands-on learning for an opportunity to connect with the community."
Local secondary schools had already had success with the Central Otago Youth Employment Programme (Coyep), which got senior students on to worksites for one day a week.
"Trades and hospo are right at the fore, so we thought, ‘what better way to do it than on a minor scale?’."
Having on-site learning removed barriers such as transport and cost and meant junior students could work on the project frequently.
"A lot of the younger kids, they need time doing this [on a] daily basis ... little and often."
Seniors were already eager to teach next year’s cohort.
Ms Hill described it as a tuakana-teina model — akin to an older sibling teaching a younger sibling.
Design and visual communication classes had designed signage for the coffee cart and business studies classes had used it as context for learning assessments.
"[It is] a way of us connecting heaps of kids to a service and skill that we can’t offer them in the classroom on this level."
The Cromwell MenzShed had been helping students build the cabin, which had been "just magic", Ms Hill said.
Central Otago was under-resourced for alternative education opportunities, and while Coyep was a step in the right direction, the programme could only offer 11 spots for 6500students, she said.
"We have to think on our feet [about] being able to offer alternative or bespoke styles of learning at our school."
The coffee cart was an investment for the wider region and she would like to see it used by other schools, Ms Hill said.
Ms Hill and co-ordinator Jenna Faulkner recently presented at the annual New Zealand Alternative Education National Conference, showcasing the programme’s success, funding model and how other schools could replicate it.
There had been a "huge amount of interest" from other schools looking to establish similar programmes.
"We had such a good response ... If we can [run it] in such a small country-based town, then in the cities it’s going to be so much easier to run."
