Yarra Community Groups
Yarra Parents & Friends Yarra Parents & Friends (P&F) has a very important, varied role. We connect parents and fundraise for both internal and external projects. It offers our community the opportunity to get involved and also provides a social network that supports our children as they move through Yarra Valley Grammar. As we come out of our second lockdown this year with remote learning, we see the resilience and growth our children have developed with the challenges placed before them. We thank the amazing teachers of Yarra for their support and appreciate the efforts they go to in being adaptive. Since the last edition of The Link we have been able to offer a number of regular initiatives like our Second-Hand Uniform Shop which raised $5,854 last year. We would like to thank Jess Cameron for taking on the volunteer role of manager for the shop, filling in big shoes
from Cathy Hainslin. We would also like to sincerely thank all the volunteers that help out on a regular basis. Unfortunately, in 2020 we were not able to do our normal array of regular activities such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day stalls and breakfasts. This continued with the MOPS luncheon, Biggest Morning Tea, Comedy night plus social parent functions all cancelled due to lockdowns. A big thank you to all the Year Level Representatives. Many have set up and maintained Facebook pages to communicate to all parents, particularly in the Junior School year levels, which have proven very successful and a great way to stay connected in such an isolated year. The Pavilion Café was also unable to proceed due to Saturday Sport being cancelled last year but we have managed to open for a number of Saturdays this winter before we were placed into lockdown again.
Thanks to Kathryn Goldsmith and Scott Cameron for taking this management role on. We were also able to support the Easter raffle for Junior School and raised $1,678.70 which was donated to The Royal Children’s Hospital. Other money raised via P&F is directly fed back into the school. Our regular initiatives include Middle and Senior school badges, Grade 6 Plaques, the Year 12 BBQ and lolly pots for seriously ill children. We also purchased a few extra items in 2020 due to COVID-19. We organised a message from Boy George to provide some comic relief for Father’s Day, cards and a poem for Mother’s Day, coffee mugs supporting Year 12s going through a particularly difficult year, and hand sanitiser for
every Yarra student. We also purchased Thank You cookies, student designed bookmarks and a display of gratitude ribbons for all the teachers and support staff to show our appreciation for all their hard work. We were very excited to be able to facilitate Lee Waters to do two timely zoom presentations to support parents and families during lockdown. Whilst COVID has caused us to change and adapt to doing things a little differently, it gave us the opportunity to try a few new fundraising initiatives. We introduced a Christmas Fundraising Drive and a Hot Cross Bun Easter Drive. Both of these were very successful and we believe can be built on moving forward.
Click here to view Boy George’s message
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