St Vincent de Paul Society

Once a week, students from across the three year levels based on the Kinnoull campus, met at lunchtime as a St Vincent de Paul group to plan and initiate fundraising for a range of charities. This year the funds raised were sent to: The Plan, Beyond Blue, Caritas Australia, and the St Vincent De Paul Appeal. The main intention of this group was to help out those in our society who are less fortunate than us. Initiatives and activities we organised this year included a casual clothes day and a sausage sizzle to raise awareness for social justice. We also helped to run the annual can collection for the Malvern Emergency Foodbank which supports Miora (young homeless couples) and Wairoa (young mentally disabled people) charities as well as supplying food hampers for distribution by the police. The response from students and staff was enormous. On Kinnoull, over 1190 cans of food were collected. These cans were transported to the Malvern Food Bank depot in East Malvern. Our efforts this year resulted in De La Salle winning the annual Gary Proudluck Trophy awarded to the school which contributed the most cans. This honour was bestowed upon us by the Mayor of Stonnington at a presentation ceremony with representatives from a number of the participating schools who are judged on a handicap system. The Gary Proudluck trophy is named after the founder of the foodbank, Sen Sgt Gary Proudluck who started the programme in 1992 after noting the needs of the less fortunate in the district while he was stationed at Malvern. An ongoing program that we also continued this year has been attending the Collingwood Soup Van. Students from Kinnoull were given the chance to volunteer at the Collingwood Soup Van on Sunday nights during the year. Two or three students at a time work with the other volunteers to prepare meals and help to distribute the meals to people who live in the high rise apartments of Collingwood as well as going down to Smith Street to chat with the people there and give them something to eat and drink. Members of St Vincent De Paul also attended the Mass of the World Youth Day cross and icon ceremony at Star of the Sea College. Among the schools that also attended were St Kevin’s College, who performed a singing number, and Salesian College. It was a great experience to be able to see the two objects that had been around the whole world on display there in front of us. A number of members also attended the annual State student conference held in May at Genazzano College and heard how other Vinnies Groups were involved in a wide range of fund raising and consciousness raising activities. We wish to acknowledge the efforts and support of all the members of the Saint Vincent De Paul Society. Without their support and dedication, many of the events that we ran would not have been able

Standing: Mr Graeme Lawler, Ben Nethersole, Xavier O’Shannessy, Adam Bonaddio, Chris Dunn, John Palombi, Kieran Ellis, Josh Tyrer, Gab Montalban, Mark Breda Front: Luke Rana, Manny Catalla to go ahead. Special mentions include Chris Dunn (secretary), Emanuel Catalla (treasurer) and Ben Nethersole for his guidance as the longest serving member over the past three years. We would all also like to thank Mr Lawler for his constant support and interest with everything that we did this year. Without his presence in our meetings, our year would not have been as productive as it was. We encourage all students to become involved in St Vincent De Paul in the coming year. What you do can really help make a difference in someone’s life. John Palombi and Daniel Rana (Co-Presidents)