Mandurah Baptist College’s year 10 students decided that this year they wanted to take on a project that would allow them to give back to the local community.
Inspired by the efforts of humanities teacher Catherine Eppen van der Aa in past years, the student councillors decided to grow her project of collecting and then donating gifts to the Aboriginal Outreach Team for distribution.
“We also had the primary school involved in donating, and then we had tonnes of year tens come in to wrap stuff, so it’s been a real group effort,” year 10 councilor Joanna Curtis said.
Year 10 coordinator Steven Burgess said he was impressed by the number of gift hampers the students had managed to put together.
“On Thursday lunchtime this room was filled with year 10 students, packing wrapping and sorting,” he said.
“Each year I always try to get the year 10 students to do something community-minded… we have a big focus on getting the students involved out in the community, and not just being about themselves.”
The hampers have been sorted according to age and gender, with a book in every one along with plush toys, board games, and more.
“Our goal is to just keep growing it, so each year we want to introduce one more school to the idea, so eventually it’s like a big community thing we can do,” Joanna said.
