SERVICE INITIATIVES
CAN DRIVE In the first term, the Community Service Council ran a joint event with the House Prefects to organise a food drive for the Auckland City Mission. Led by Chantelle May, Sophie Brosnahan and Isobella Francis, the girls dedicated many hours to coordinating the week. The Mission is seeing recordbreaking demand for its services – particularly food services – as more people than ever before turn to them for help. Since the lockdown started, it has been giving out more than 2,000 emergency food parcels every week to families who are struggling at this challenging time – more than double the number it was providing before COVID.
Pink Shirt Day Our Student Services Council, with support from our DioVersity groups, organised the wearing of pink tops on Friday 20 May to support Pink Shirt Day, which promotes the thinking around inclusivity and safety while valuing all in our School. Their challenge to their fellow students was ensuring their actions match their words every day here at Dio. They said: “On Pink Shirt Day we are so excited to see you all standing up and embodying the spirit of what this day
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signifies. As you know, this day is about standing up against bullying, in the hope that every single person feels valued and welcome in our school community. As part of Student Services this year, we are working hard to create an atmosphere that includes these positive values and we want to spark conversations that allow our words to turn into actions. You have the ability as an individual student to make a difference in the school culture, even if this is just small daily acts of kindness and upstanding.”
Each morning the House Prefects and their tutor classes entertained us in the Chapel Courtyard with music and costumes, rallying students to donate towards this fantastic initiative. At lunchtimes, the Community Service Council counted and packaged up all the donations. Our final donation to the Mission filled 114 boxes containing nearly 6,000 non-perishable food items. Congratulations to Cochrane house who donated the most items and was awarded the Service Cup at a full school assembly. The Cochrane girls joined together in the School Hall (with the doors open!) for a pizza lunch sponsored by Hell Pizza.
