Project Compassion

Ash Wednesday marked the commencement of Lent, a time to reflect on the events leading up to Easter and the death and resurrection of Christ. It is also the start of Project Compassion, an annual fundraising period coordinated by Caritas. As in previous years, the focus of the fundraising is for projects that help individuals and communities in marginalized areas of Australia and in developing countries all around the world.

Caritas have a different story to share each week. This is the story of Laxmi and how she and her community benefit from the funds raised for Project Compassion.

Laxmi lives with her mother and siblings in Jajarkot, one of the least developed districts in the remote Karnali province, with almost half of the population living below the poverty line.

Tragedy struck when Laxmi was 10 years old. Her father, who worked hard to pay for his children’s education, passed away. Laxmi was devastated. She used to love to go to school but for the first time she stopped attending her classes

Before her father’s passing, Laxmi joined a child’s club at her school that was run with the support of Caritas Nepal, through the Nepal Livelihoods and Resilience Program. Child’s clubs support students to develop their speaking, writing and leadership skills through extracurricular activities. 

Thanks to the support of her child’s club, Laxmi was encouraged to resume her education. She became an active member of her child’s club, where she developed the skills and confidence to become a leader, advocating for clean water taps at her school.

Fundraising Initiatives

Here at the College, each Homeroom has a Project Compassion donation box that students can contribute to. There will also be a number of fundraising events throughout Lent, including Hot Cross Bun sales, an Easter Egg raffle and an end of term concert. Each student is asked to contribute a Fair Trade Easter chocolate item for the big Easter Egg raffle, which will be held on the last day of term. Bags to collect these will appear in Homerooms next week.

Trish Moloney
Living Justice Leader

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Sustainability Report

Sustainability Leaders

Mary Tobin

Hello, I’m Mary and I’m one of the Year 12 College Sustainability Leaders for 2023. I’m very passionate about sustainability and environmentalism, having been a Sustainability Leader ever since Year 8 here at at the College and I was also a Grade 6 Sustainability Leader at my primary school. I care a lot about the environment, so I want to help make changes to support it in our College community and encourage other students to become passionate about sustainability too. 

Yuhan Huang

Hi everyone, I am Yuhan and I will be working alongside Mary and the rest of the environmental team for 2023. I have not been part of many sustainability activities in the past, aside from the garden club which I have grown an interest in since last year. I hope we can recruit more people into the garden club! At the same time, I also hope we can make sustainability more fun so more people could be interested.

Sustainability Activities

In the past few years, the Sustainability Leaders have worked on getting new bins for the school, improving our veggie patch and holding a ‘clothes swap’. We’d like to expand on those ideas and bring a few more of our own this year. The Kilbreda Clothes Swap is something we’d definitely like to run again, it was amazing to see how many students got involved in donating their preloved clothes and excited about swapping them for other pieces! We’d love to hold another one this year and make it even bigger and better than last year! 

Another thing we’re working on is the possibility of changing from ‘Sustainability Leaders’ to ‘SEAL’ or ‘Student Environmental Action Leaders’ as we’d like to make our group focus more about taking action and helping change the College for the better! We’ve already had our first few meetings with the Sustainability Team this year where many brilliant ideas have been shared. We’re very excited to share them with you during the year and hope other students in the College become involved in the Sustainability Program here at Kilbreda. 

Moving Forward

Our plan for 2023 is to organise an environmental activity per term. For Term 1, we are planning on doing ‘Earth Hour’, which is on 24 March. Further information will be posted closer to the date.  

Mary Tobin and Yuhan Huang
Sustainability Leaders