Committees

COMMUNICATIONS Committee

The Communications Committee has had an unprecedented year in 2020, due to COVID-19 and the ensuing challenges which it brought us. Our goal this year was to encourage and provide exposure to our talented students and their voices, while simultaneously creating an atmosphere of inclusivity of all students who take a potential interest in writing. We faced a year of intermittency, and trial and error. Valentine's Day was an experience we were all very grateful was able to take place. We beautified the Atrium in streamers and wrote pick-up lines on post-it notes and stuck these on lockers to spread our love. Our planned speed-dating event had to be cancelled, sadly, as were visits from writers. Despite the adversities of 2020, we managed to end the year on an excellent note with the annual Writers Night, a showcase and celebration of some of our creative talent within St Cuthbert’s. It was a beautiful night of sharing stories and memories – and feasting of course.

Comm Comm has a key role in the ongoing management and organisation of the student publication, ‘Margin’, that was started by members of 2018 Comms. The ‘Margin’ sub-committee worked closely with a growing band of writers across the Senior School; interest and commitment was strong. Special thanks to the librarian, Cait Kneller, for all her inspiration, support and guidance with ‘Margin’, and for revamping the ‘Margin’ website. This can be accessed through the FC Library website. There are exciting plans for further development of written and visual stories i n 2021.

Overall, we had an amazing but challenging year and we all very much enjoyed growing closer as a committee.

—Willow Handy and Rosalind McCallum

DEVELOPMENT Committee

We as the 2020 Development Committee, were lucky enough to have been involved in so many projects this year, despite disturbances from COVID-19. We initially were committed to putting on the annual Fashion Show, working with local brands to raise money for the Sports Achievers' Fund, which helps St Cuthbert’s students who are high achievers in their chosen sport and who would otherwise be unable to represent the school at a national or international level due to financial constraints. Leading up to this event, we as a Committee really enjoyed learning more about event planning and how to advertise and communicate with brands for this significant College event. Nevertheless, due to lockdown being implemented, we did have to cancel the event. This, however, did not deter us from giving back to our St Cuthbert’s community and the wider community. During lockdown, we initiated the St Cuth’s Together Calling Campaign in which we would call Old Girls of the College and check up on them during this uncertain time. Even talking to them for a few minutes every couple of days, allowed us to form great friendships and brought a bit of happiness to both of our days during this time. Once we were back at school, we worked on Gratitude Day where we gave thanks to our teachers and staff of the College. We used some products we had received for the Fashion Show from our generous sponsors at Griffins and MOR to make goodie bags for them, as a small token of our appreciation for all the help they gave us as students throughout this year. With the remainder of the products from brands such as Stolen Girlfriends Club, Prescription Skincare, Epsom Spray Tan, Papinelle, Lewis Road Creamery, Servilles, Angel En Provence and more, we were able to put together two raffles to help raise money for the Sport Achievers’ Fund. —Lola Cox and Chloe Tattersfield

GAMES Committee

The Games Committee aims to encourage participation in Sport and to promote all of our awesome Sports teams across the school. We are all very lucky to have the opportunity to participate in the vast range of codes. This year has been very challenging and we have definitely felt tested at times with there being many cancellations due to COVID-19. Due to this the Games Committee had to adapt throughout lockdown to encourage our students to keep moving throughout a very challenging and uncertain time. To continue promoting Sports we created a challenge which was the hashtag #activeisolation. We started this off to create a challenge for girls to post photos or videos of their being active during isolation and were so happy with the huge response we had from the girls at St Cuthbert's.

Though this year provided a very different sporting season; to what we are all used to, there were still some great sporting achievements which are a testament to the hard work of our girls and coaches. Earlier in the year, we hosted a Games Committee sausage sizzle to raise money. These funds went towards a shared pizza lunch later in the year, to thank all of our student volunteer coaches. These girls give up a lot of their time to help our younger students excel in their sports and this lunch was a token of our appreciation for all their hard work this year. We are very lucky that as well as this challenge, we had many coaches encouraging their teams to keep active. These students were provided with many resources to keep moving and had challenges to complete as well as workouts done on Zoom with their teammates.

—Rachel Denny and Charlotte Penny

GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP

Committee

The aim of the Global Citizenship Committee this year was to raise awareness, fundraise for a range of different causes, and enhance the community within St Cuthbert’s. Despite the challenges and limitations that came with COVID-19, we were lucky enough to be able to continue with the majority of our events, and also support lives that were affected by the lockdown. At the beginning of this year, we fundraised for the Grace Milane Handbag appeal in memory of the British backpacker who was tragically killed in New Zealand in 2018. From both the Junior and Senior School we managed to collect over 100 handbags, filled with a range of supplies to help domestic violence victims in New Zealand. We also held the Love and Diversity week where we celebrated the many different cultures and identities at our school, and organised a poetry competition, celebrated Pink Shirt Day and gave a cake to the Tutor Class which won a quiz about Love and Diversity. Our biggest event of this year was the Fair Trade Baking Competition which raised over $1,000 for Fair Trade, and saw some incredibly talented students from across the College enter some delicious cakes. Some of the amazing entries are pictured here on the right. Towards the end of the year, we held the first-ever Gratitude Day, where we aimed to celebrate the things for which we were grateful despite COVID-19. Alongside the Service Committee, we held Foodbanks to support those in need after the lockdown.

We would like to thank everyone in our Committee who managed to help us bring these events to life and to everyone who participated in any of our fundraisers. We also want to thank Ms Giles for being an incredibly passionate and motivating leader; we couldn’t have done it without you. —Olivia Thompson and Amber Waymouth Global Citizenship Committee Leaders

JUNIOR SCHOOL Committee

It has both been an exciting and interesting year for the Junior School Committee who have worked hard to ensure that there is a bond and real connection between the Senior School girls and their Little Sisters.

As COVID-19 and lockdown occurred relatively early in the year, many events had to be cancelled but it encouraged us to get creative! The Senior girls checked in on their Little Sisters by joining their classes, participating in games and class work. Keeping fit, active and creative was also something that we thought about during lockdown and so a Bingo game was created. The girls sent in photos of themselves completing the tasks and some awards given out to girls that went the extra mile. The Committee really enjoyed seeing how committed and excited the girls were to see us in their classes and participating in Bingo. Once we were through lockdown, there were many events such as the Kings School Exchange, Gratitude day, various Camps, and the Book Parade. But the personal favourite was probably the Book Parade as the Senior girls were able to join in too, and dress up as their favourite character. We have enjoyed our time with our Little Sisters in the Junior School this year and have really felt as though we have made a difference and connected with the girls and, we would have to say that the most rewarding part was being able to bring smiles to the girls’ faces! —Olivia Haskell and Natania Thomas

PERFORMING ARTS

Committee

The Performing Arts Committee has had a great year, still managing to do two of our three events despite the challenges faced. ‘May Music Month’ is celebrated around the country and this year we adapted it to an online platform, ‘Making Amazing Music’ in our Bubbles, which was met with great success. We had a fantastic range and variety of performances from both staff and girls, with such a wonderful response that we extended it to June as well, calling it ‘June Tunes’.

We also still managed to hold the annual Talent Quest. After a week of lunchtime auditions, we had some amazing performances with our six finalists – Arabella Patrick, Wannabe (K Pop dance crew), Justina Maka, Hayley Minturn, Fangyu Zhu and Brooke Darrow performing at lunch to a fantastic audience. Hayley Minturn took out first place with a very impressive musical theatre performance ‘The Girl in 15G’. We were very thankful to our judges Ms Thwaites, Ms Walsh, Mr Gilmour, and Mr Smith for giving up their time to help judge this event. We were also very lucky to have Samara Saunders perform while the judges deliberated. Samara came third in the 2019 Talent Quest and performed a hip-hop routine. —Eva Matheson and Cate Sharma

SERVICE Committee

The Service Committee has aimed to not only provide Service, but work to provide Justice to a variety of communities. This year, post COVID-19, it is now even more important that we look out for one another and do our best to help in every way through these tough times. As part of our ‘By Love Serve’ motto at St Cuthbert’s, Service and Values Projects are one of our main focusses, and getting every girl Year 7-13 involved in aspects of Service this year has been one of our goals. This year, the structure of Service Projects has changed in order to achieve this goal. Each House has been assigned a charity or project on which they will focus their efforts and work directly with the organisations. This is so, as a community, we are able to help multiple important causes, while making sure that every girl is able to be directly involved in Service. The projects include; Camp Quality, DePaul House, Manurewa East Primary, Girls in Need, Refugee Resettlement Centre and Painga Trust. This year has had a few disruptions to say the least and has meant that we have had to readjust our timeline by pushing back some of our plans. Fundraising activities were limited this year, as we understand the difficulty in asking our community members for funds post COVID-19. We have, instead, looked at what we can do collectively as a community to help those in need with limited fundraising. The multiple Foodbanks held throughout the year were extremely successful, and we appreciate the generosity of the College community. The Committee has also run the Senior School Mufti Days, and the donations given will be put towards continuing the Service Projects into next year. We look forward to hearing about all the amazing work that will be done next year. We know that the girls are very much looking forward to being involved in our Service Projects further next year. We hope that the projects are able to inspire the girls to have a deeper sense of empathy, love and compassion for those in our communities experiencing hardships, and motivate them to want to continue to provide Service and Justice beyond our College projects. All of us involved in the Service Committee, have very much enjoyed giving back to others and it has been a very rewarding experience. A big thank you to Reverend Joubert for his support throughout the year. —Sarah White and Anna Hill

VISUAL ARTS

Committee

The perk of being in the Visual Arts Committee was having full control over the creative direction of the Ball. We got to choose the theme, plan the decor and make decisions that would ensure our vision came to life in the best way possible. Our theme was Renaissance, meaning rebirth and renewal. We wanted to use the Renaissance Art period as the aesthetic of the ball, with arrangements of grand statues, projections of Botticelli and Da Vinci paintings and ethereal lighting. We divided the tasks among the team such as liaising with White Door Photography over backdrops, making a launch video, creating invitations, lighting, walls, and decorating the entrance way among others. As the leaders of the Committee, we oversaw all operations, attended meetings with the Steering Committee (the committee of parents who handled logistics) and ensured everyone could do their tasks as easily and efficiently as possible. We devoted a few weekends to look at the storage of decor, from previous years, making our decorations (we made a bunch of beautiful hanging clouds!), and doing final preparations. It was awesome to see how well everyone cooperated and worked as a team. Although we didn't ever see the Ball come to life, we were able to contribute to Gratitude Day, sending in our artwork to be printed on thank-you cards which was a great success. The Visual Arts Committee has had a whirlwind of a year, adapting to change. While sadly our main focus, the Ball was cancelled due to the second COVID-19 nationwide lockdown, the skills we have learned from collaborative work, planning/gathering ideas right through to execution were spectacular and will stay with us, always. —Jeri Misa and Starr Zhang

YEAR 7 AND 8 Committee

Being a leader of the Year 7 and 8 Committee for 2020, has been very rewarding and exciting; in particular, learning to lead a group of committed Year 13 students, as well as meeting and connecting with the younger student body. Even though this year didn’t turn out like many of us had hoped, our Committee still managed to participate in a wide range of activities, some selected by ourselves, and others by the Year 7 and 8 students. Our first event of the year was a shared lunch that we organized in the first term to encourage the Year 7’s to mingle with one another. This helped both new and old girls to mix. We all got involved, bringing food to share, laughing and talking with one another. As a committee we worked together as we learnt to trust one another, and Alayna and I also grew in our confidence to lead.

We planned many other events for the Year 7 and 8s however these had to be put on hold due to COVID-19 and the lockdowns. The main event was the Year 7 and 8 social, a highlight of the school calendar for our Committee. Everything had been planned (with the help of the amazing Parent Committee), decorations had been bought and invitations were sent, we had even picked our costumes of the night; Fairies! Then we went into lockdown, and our plans were crushed.

Though we weren’t able to hold the social, this significant disappointment taught us many valuable lessons such as the ability to continue on in the face of adversity, as well as the ability to problem solve. We were forced to think outside the box as we planned lunch time games for the girls, sweet scrambles, and tutor time Kahoots. We also visited the Year 7 classrooms many times, helping them with their artwork for the Wearable Arts Competition in Term 2.

Even though this year didn’t pan out like we had hoped, we still managed to have a lot of fun as a Committee; we connected with the younger girls and formed many new friendships which I know we will consider to be highlights of our last year at St Cuthbert's.

—Anna Harrison and Alayna Willis-Baker