John Paul College pupils give back to community

John Paul College students set to work with their shovels. Photo/Supplied

Pupils at John Paul College have had fun putting some of their time towards helping out charities and the community.

They were taking part in Student Volunteer Army charity projects organised by Skoolkit.

Class 8MB was encouraged by Mrs Grimm, their English teacher, to get involved.

When they heard about the support Ronald McDonald House in Wellington gave Mrs Grimm and her family in 2013, when her twin grandsons were born at just 28 weeks, they decided to support the institution.

Since the end of term 2, in their own time, they made and gathered beanies, buntings, pens, notebooks, mobiles, clothing, children's books, baby blankets, goodie bags, stickers, and alphabet bags for name tags and origami.

Students Katie Hawker, 12, Toby Roche, 13, and Mary Ortega, 12, said in the first three weeks there was a lot of planning around who was going to make what packages.

Colouring books was one of the things students made, and they bought crayons with collected donations, they said.

Toby said Ronald McDonald House was a great cause to support because it picked up parents going through hard times.

"People like those who have premature babies don't deserve to have to pay for mishap and medical bills."

Katie said a lot of pupils' parents and grandparents did knitting too.

Mary gave a shout out to Mackenzie Whyte, who she said worked hard typing up what was going to go into newsletters and emails for the parents about the project.

Other pupils worked hard to plan a day of cleaning up at the Utuhina Stream.

Grace Klava, 11, Charlotte Schweizer, 11 and Jordis Waitoa, 11, said their jobs at the stream included picking up rubbish, moving logs, giving it a good tidy up and planting trees.

"Some of the jobs were quite hard, but we were all there to help each other out."

At the end they were asking if they could all organise going down to the stream again.

Teacher Marie Hepi said she had been amazed at how independent her pupils had been with the Utuhina Stream project.

Class 8CW students also baked for the food bank and Fulfill van.