From men’s mental health to waste services, Year 10 students, Neve Pethybridge and Lily-May Sharpe, and Year 11 student Charlie Isaac, have each begun social justice projects that are close to their hearts.
And now, they’ve got some vital funding to help push the project over the line.
Each received $500 through the Joseph Grech Scholarship from Sandhurst Education: an exclusive scholarship where only 10 students from a pool of hundreds are selected.
The scholarship recognises exceptional young people at Sandhurst colleges who model exemplary behaviour and contribute to their school community through their commitment to fair and social justice.
The social justice projects were developed individually by the students with support from the Catholic identity and community deputy principal Rachelle Chapman.
Neve’s project focused on reconciliation between communities and Indigenous Peoples, a topic she chose after participating in activities in Reconciliation Week and noticing the importance of the subject in the community.
“I want to get an Aboriginal artist to come in and work with students to put a together a piece of art that we can display in the school.”
She said not only would this strengthen the relationship between Aboriginal communities and St Augustine’s College, but educate younger year levels about Aboriginal cultures.
Charlie’s project focuses on men’s mental health and he said it was an important project to him because he had seen firsthand how unregulated emotions with young men can spiral out of control.
“I’m planning on getting a guest speaker to come and talk to a group of young men, Years 9, 10 and 11s, about ways they can regulate their emotions and be really engaged in their mental health,” Charlie said.
Recently, he and his friend group went through a difficult time after a tragic accident, and Charlie noticed how different people processed it.
“I thought that if I could maybe teach the younger years some good ways, they could handle it better if something like that ever popped – I felt that would be really good.”
Lily-May wanted her social justice project to focus on reducing waste in the school community, promoting proper waste disposal and working towards getting a cans and bottle system for students to use.
“My idea is (the school) to get bins for cans and bottles so that we’re reducing waste, and then the money we get from those bins and the bottles we can put into making a school garden,” she said.
She was inspired by the 10-year anniversary of the Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis’ second encyclical, which promotes people caring for the earth and being conscious about us sharing a common home.
“It will show the process of recycling and putting what we use back into the world,” Lily-May said.
While the work has just begun for these social justice warriors, it will culminate in a ceremony on July 31 in Shepparton where they will be presented with certificates of appreciation from the Sandhurst Diocese in front of dignitaries, and students and staff from schools across the state.
Ms Chapman, who has been overseeing their projects, said the school was very fortunate and proud to have had three students receive funding.
“It goes without saying, we’re incredibly proud of these three, but the work that they’ll do even following these projects, we’ve talked about continuing some advocacy with through these ideas already,” Ms Chapman said.
The students agreed it was good to see their work was being recognised.
“It just felt really good to see all the hard work pay off, and now we can really get stuck into what we want to do, which is complete these projects and make a difference,” Charlie said.
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