Service Learning Update – Eat Up

The working bee was an ideal follow up to the message Reverend Mark had conveyed through the Service to our School community; that being, seeing Lent as a time of giving, as well as a time when we look to give up some of the indulgences of our lives. Reverend Mark explained that Lent is a period of personal reflection, where individuals stop and look at their lives and contemplate where their priorities lie, and perhaps where they would be better focused.

The Eat Up program promotes understanding within our student body that school for some children is vastly different to what they as students experience here at St Paul’s. The fact that many students in our local primary schools do not get lunch packed for them each day is very foreign to most of the students’ own lived experience. The opportunity to create lunch packs for these students and deliver them to primary schools within our community deepens our students understanding of the difficulties some families face on a day to day basis.

This week’s working bee was tremendously supported by our student body with 45 students taking part in a highly efficient production line that resulted in the preparation and packing of 150 lunch packs. These were delivered to three schools within our community, those being Bald Hills, Lawnton and Humbybong State Schools. The Service Learning team was supported by both Gladius and Mitre Houses. With this growing level of support within our St Paul’s community, Service Learning will be looking at expanding the program to include a fourth school next round.

Service at St Paul’s continues to flourish and the first committee meeting attracted a whopping 90 students. We are changing the venue for our next meeting, to the Lecture Theatre to accommodate our numbers. Our next project will be Clean Up St Paul’s Day on Friday 5 March and then a group of our students will join the Clean Up Australia Day, at Pine rivers Park on Sunday 7 March.