Students drive community support

THREE groups at Sebastopol’s Phoenix College spent the school term’s last week taking final stock on items collected throughout the semester to be donated to non-profits.

About 60 year 11 students were involved in three separate support drives, gathering canned goods for Foodbank, hygiene products for the One Humanity Shower Bus, and coats for Off Your Back.

The initiatives were part of the students’ personal development curriculum.

Year 11 vocational major teacher Laura Head ran the hygiene product class and said it was about imparting a sense of community onto the students.

“We started this in week three of the term,” she said. “Part of their personal development class was community involvement and running a project for different groups in the community.

“To start, we wrote donation letters to big and small businesses. We also reached out to staff and students who reached out to their community and we got lots dropped off that way.

“A lot of this has come from the local community. It’s been the main way we’ve collected things.”

The food drive received more than 1600 tins, while the coat drive collected about 80 items, and the hygiene appeal gathered nearly 1000 products.

The coats were bundled and bussed to Off Your Back Geelong on Wednesday morning while the other two collections will be donated early next term.

The next semester will also see a presentation from the students about the initiatives.

Ashley was one of the students part of the class collecting canned goods and said the project showed her how she can help her community.

“Our enquiring question was how can we help people below the poverty line?” she said.

“I think we’ve been successful in that. We’re still going to reach out to the community to try to get more than what we have.

“I think this has really shown us how we can make an impact on the community.”

Though donations officially closed this week, people can still drop off items before the remaining collections are sent off next term.