One Found – Three to Go!

A Christchurch resident has come forward to claim one of the final four prizes in Cookie Time’s Christmas Cookies 25th anniversary promotion; leaving just three more winners to find before the promotion ends on 31 March.

Chris Wilkinson, from North Brighton in Christchurch, had been holding off opening his final bucket of Christmas Cookies to make them last longer. When he finally opened the bucket this week, he found one of the winning golden cookie vouchers entitling him to a year’s supply of cookies.

Chris, whose family went without power and water for a week following last month’s earthquake, says the win is welcome news. "We were very fortunate to escape relatively unscathed from the earthquake, and winning a year’s supply of cookies is definitely a little something extra to look forward to after everything that's been going on here."

A total of 12 prize packages have been on offer in the Christmas Cookies competition, organised to mark a quarter century of this iconic Kiwi treat. Ten of the prizes are on golden cookie vouchers inside the Christmas Cookies buckets, with a further two winners drawn from fans who chose to ‘like’ Christmas Cookies on Facebook.

With nine prizes redeemed, and winners from Auckland through to Temuka in the central South Island (including three from Christchurch), Cookie Time is keen to locate the final three winners before the promotion ends next week. It is urging all cookie lovers with buckets of unopened Christmas Cookies to start munching and find those final three prizes.

Other winners to date are Glynis Bartlam and Ben Bolton from Auckland; Zaria McFarlane from Rotorua; Sharleen Tippet from Kapiti Coast; Chris Harrington-Lines from Wellington; Amy Cooney and Diane Lord from Christchurch and Josh Sands from Temuka, just north of Timaru.

Christmas Cookies – mini chocolate chip or apricot and chocolate cookies in red plastic buckets – are sold nationwide in the lead-up to Christmas. They are sold by tertiary students who run their individual territories as a business and part of the proceeds from sales go to charity. This year, just over $200,000 was raised for the Cookie Time Charitable Trust, set up in 2003 to help Kiwi kids discover their gifts. The Trust focuses particularly on two areas: innovation in learning, and dyslexia. As principal sponsor of the Dyslexia Foundation of New Zealand (DFNZ), this includes supporting initiatives designed to nurture and celebrate the creative power that dyslexia can deliver in innovative thinking, artistic ability, entrepreneurship and creative problem solving.