Student project helps the homeless

BANNOCKBURN P-12 College students are set to deliver twenty-six hampers of essential goods to local charities this week.

The handover of food supplies, toiletries and other goodies will be the result of a 10-week program completed by the school’s year 10 and 11 Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning students.

Twelve people were grouped together on their projects, and VCAL teacher and wellbeing leader Shelley Kitchen said they were given the freedom to choose their focus.

“They became quite interested in the issue of homelessness and did some research on that in the Geelong area by contacting some organisations and collecting donations,” she said.

“In researching what would be most appreciated by the homeless, they asked for things like toiletries, soap, tissues, socks, blankets and non-perishable foods, things that are light and transportable.

“For the students, this has really allowed them to put into practice their work-related and personal development skills units.

“Sometimes VCAL can be seen as the easy option for schooling, so it’s been great for our school community to see how hard our students actually work.”

Donations were collected for three weeks until early October, with students collecting $500 for the initiative alongside hamper items.

The funds were used to buy additional goods last week, and year 11 student Jake Goodman said he’s pleased with the results.

“Everybody was very generous. There’s a fair amount of people that donated with a lot of money from local businesses,” he said.

“We went with homelessness because we thought it’d be a good way to help out and that they’d really benefit from it. It was pretty overwhelming looking at all the research and statistics.

“I didn’t realise how prominent homelessness was in the community, and it was good to actually do something with the skills we’ve learned over the past year.

“It didn’t seem helpful at the time, but this has proved us wrong. It’s been good to see we’ve made a difference too.”