Donations in Kind

I said I would keep you guys up-to-date with my Wyndham 'Leaders of the Future' program and so here I am. Yesterday morning we had our first community engagement activity. You may also know that Friday was also my year ten formal so basically I came home and went to sleep late to wake up early the next morning. That was not fun but the rest of the day was. Anyway, so this community engagement activity was with the Werribee Rotary and their project Donations in Kind. Donations in Kind is where they collect old clothes, toys, and furniture etcetera to send overseas to less-well-off countries. The majority of this stuff is new and is from big businesses like Coles and Woolworths where logos have changed around so we were packing Woolworths shirts, Coles uniforms, police ties and much more.

Source: http://rotarnet.com.au/users/9/96452/updates170211.htm

It was a great experience and those of us who came really came together as a group. On the bus trip there we were sort of getting to know each other but were still separated into class groups. However, when we arrived and the organisers saw there were more of us than they were expecting it meant that we all had to work together to effectively get the job done. It was a lot of trial and error but in the end we worked it all out and were working effectively. We had to communicate and get to know each other's names to effectively work as a team which acted as an ice-breaker and on the bus trip home we were all joking and laughing with each other rather than sitting in silence. It was a great experience and it was touching to realise that the things we packed were actually going overseas to people who did not need it and those clothes could mean the difference between life and death in places where the climate is in the extremes. We were shown around the place and told stories of how they had heard back from people who were grateful. They even told us how when we went over to Papua New Guinea we would see a large number of people wearing old Telstra or Coles shirts. We were all humbled by our experience and we will always remember our experiences.

I promise to keep you all updated with fundraising and other activities, see you tomorrow.

Fundraising

So the trouble with going to a school with so many fundraisers (besides the constant loss of money) is that when it comes time to have one you have no idea what to do because most of them have already being done. As those of you who have been reading this blog for some time may know that I am part of a leadership program run by Wyndham Police called 'Leaders of the Future'. Part of this program (the culmination in fact) is walking 96 kilometres of the Kokoda Track. Some of what we are doing involves raising money for a local Health Centre in the village of Menari which is along the track. So now that it comes time to think of brainstorming ideas with the other person from my school who is also doing the program we are at a bit of a loss. Damn you charitable school.

Source: http://desktopmag.com.au/project-wall/fundraising-downunder-logo/

Do not ask me why I chose that picture. I used Google to image search "Fundraising" and that was the only one that caught my eye. Do not judge me. Anyway, so I spoke to one of the assistant principals at my school and managed to secure the casual clothes day at the end of term for our cause. The thing with our school is most end-of-terms (except the end of year since we all finish different days) are casual clothes days to raise money for whatever organisation in the school puts their hand up for it (or organises) it first. If no one organises it then there is no casual clothes day. That was the easy part. The hard part is thinking of other things we can do on the day to raise even more money. We can not do a talent show as so many other groups have already done that this year. A guess-the-lollies in the jar competition is also out of the question as they only just did that a few weeks ago for the 40 Hour Famine. I was thinking of maybe doing a raffle with jars of lollies as prizes or something. That way there could be more than one prize and we could get away with charging more than 50 cents a ticket. Anyway, I better leave it at this as it is getting late.

Why does our school have to be so damn charitable? See you tomorrow!