Colourful students show compassion and care

Students put the ‘fun’ into ‘fundraising’ with a colourful mass-participation event.

About 200 students from Sacred Heart Catholic School at Ulverstone took part in a colour run to raise funds for some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Grade 3/4 Teacher Errin Cruse explained how the event came about.

“As part of our Lent unit we were looking for opportunities to serve the wider, global community through a Catholic social teaching lens of outreach,” Ms Cruse said.

“As a 3/4 teaching team, we decided to support the work of Caritas through Project Compassion by hosting an event that involved the whole school and one that would make a big impact on our fundraising efforts. We explored the Caritas website and loved the idea of a colour run.”

Students from prep to grade 6 took part and raised $930, with additional money donated through Project Compassion boxes. In the process, they learned more about Caritas Australia, the international aid and development organisation of the Catholic Church in Australia.

Ms Cruse added: “This year, Caritas called us to ‘Be More’. We explored that in depth as a school by talking about being more grateful, understanding, compassionate, inclusive and how we could encourage ourselves to ‘be more’ for others.”

The students at the school viewed stories of those helped by Caritas, including a vocational school for the deaf in the Solomon Islands which was supplied with water tanks and cyclone-proof materials, and that of Halima, a young widow with two children who fled violence in Myanmar and is now in a refugee camp in Bangladesh.

“[We] were impressed with the work that they are doing for some of the world’s most vulnerable people,” Ms Cruse said.

 “It is our hope that our funds go a long way to improving the living conditions of people who need it most and that those in our school community are inspired by the work or Caritas.”