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. 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.

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 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.”

Some of the prefects with our Ukraine peace banner (L-R) Isobella Francis, Chantelle May, Emma Parton, Ella Riley.

UNITED FOR UKRAINE

Our Head Prefects Emma Parton and Ella Riley wanted to find a way for our School to show unity for the situation in the Ukraine. In partnership with the Community Service Council, they organised for each student in Years 5 - 13 to be given a blue or yellow paper dove on which to write a message of peace and unity. On our Getup for Ukraine Day on Monday 4 April, the prefects unveiled the mural, which was on display for a week for students to see. The messages, illustrations and poems were very moving and we look forward to this being donated to the Ukranian Society of New Zealand. To boost our donations to the Ukraine Crisis Appeal, the Community Service Council also organised a bake sale that raised $320. Well done to all the students involved for coming together to show our compassion.

Service Learning and Tuia Days

In thinking about the purpose of our mufti days, that they are not just a day for students to wear their own clothes but rather days when we dress in a particular theme and raise money for specific charities, we decided that we needed a new name that better reflects the intention behind such days. We want our students to be more aware of the charities that we support and better understand the needs that exist in the wider community here in New Zealand and overseas. In our search for a new name for these non-uniform days we consulted with Te Whare Huia, our Ma¯ori Studies Faculty, and they suggested using the term’ Tuia’. Tuia literally means to sew or to stitch. In our use of this term we are drawing on this meaning in the sense of these days drawing us together as a community – we are stitched together and united in support for the whatever charity we are supporting. We think this name and concept better reflect our Service Learning philosophy and our diverse school culture. We had our inaugural Tuia Day on 28 June in support of Red Nose Day and Cure Kids, and we look forward to learning about and supporting other charities as the year goes on.