“Our group of year 5 children were very keen, they decided on causes they were passionate about, we carved them down to a selection of 2, cleaning our local school grounds and planting trees on the Pigeon Mountain. After planning our school cleanup in groups as the caretakers and gardeners, the children cleaned skip bin of organic rubbish and weeding from our school ground.”
“My Year 7 group have got into the spirit this year and we have made Christmas cards for our local retirement village. Because of time constraints and Plan A not going according to plan we chose to complete this as a Year 7 cohort rather than in individual classes. The students really enjoyed creating these, colouring and crafting them, and putting in their own personal Christmas messages to the elderly. My class also made some individual Christmas tree decorations as well. They will be delivered by the teachers at the end of the term once they have all been completed. I am sure the people in the village will love receiving these in the lead up to Christmas.”
“My class really embraced this school kit. They took ownership and decided to make wax wraps to reduce rubbish and become more environmentally friendly. The wax and material were donated which really helped and students took various rolls to develop and research our design and process with minimal support, they also took on expert rolls to teach others. The wax wraps are going to be gifted to various families in the community with some Christmas baking enclosed. This is definitely a project that I would complete again.”
“Our Year 8 class had a lot of ideas of how they could volunteer, the kit was excellent to help them focus their decision making and work together as a group. Their overall focus was environmental activities and they organised some clean up activities and got in contact with the Whakatane Kiwi Trust while away on camp.”
“This was a fantastic kit for our learners and fitted beautifully with our Cultural Identity theme. We are, as New Zealanders all about the 'Number 8 wire', making a little go a long way and a bit of 'elbow grease'.
We collaborated with two other classes at school, so we had two year 4 classes and a year 6 class.
After many discussions, research into what past schools had done and getting a few experts in, the children had great ideas, many of them global. Through questioning and brainstorming their ideas they soon realised that it is okay to go small and that many small actions can have a great impact.
For our SVA akonga decided to clean up a local reserve which is in walking distance from school. It needed graffiti removal, rubbish removal, weeding and some replanting. However they also wanted to connect with the elderly on some level. To achieve this goal they asked grandparents and local elderly to assist them. This is great because there can quite a lot of confusion over what is a weed and what is not!”
“Year 2 and 3 at Kohimarama School wanted to make a difference in our community. Our local beach is a very special place for us. We used the Student Volunteer kit to help organise ourselves for a beach clean up. The students all took their roles on board. We proudly carried the flag to and from the beach and felt like we really had made a difference. The positive spin-offs from this experience are on-going.”
“My class loved the opportunity to choose an area in the community in need and come up with a way to practically give to that need. They wanted to help children with health difficulties and choose to do this through Make a Wish. The students planned and carried out a Market Day. This gave them so many opportunities to work in teams, be creative and think of ideas that would work best. It was a wonderful opportunity which I would definitely do again.”
“I used this resource with another Year 5 class. It was AWESOME! The students loved the idea of having specific roles. Lots of involvement with both our students and their families. Would love to use this resource again.”
