School's food festival for a good cause

John Paul College students Madison Keightley-Phillipps (left), 17, Bethany Cheesman, 16 and Madeline Van Harselaar, 18, enjoy the International Food Festival yesterday. Photo / Ben Fraser

John Paul College students have shown off their culinary skills at their annual International Food Festival.

At the school yesterday, students made food from their own country of origin, or from a country they admire, to fundraise for 10 Indian orphans they sponsor through the Lasallian Foundation.

Principal Patrick Walsh said the students were always supportive of the festival.

"Once the students had recovered their costs, we raised about $1000 last time and we are hoping to get to about that or more this time.

"We have got about 42 nationalities at John Paul College and about 25 countries are represented here.

"And it's a great afternoon for the kids to dress up and have fun."

Student Madison Keightley-Phillips, 17, was part of a French food stall.

She said it was a fun day.

"It is a time to celebrate the different languages and cultures in school. We take French and we went to France at the beginning of the year.

"We have always done a French stall and made crepes and waffles - they have always been really popular and it's fun to see everyone all dressed up, and we get to wear berets."

Year 13 student Ella Florence, 18, is the Lasallian Captain and said she had tried to come up with innovative ways to get students to donate to the foundation.

She said the food festival was the biggest fundraiser the school did for the foundation.

"We support them so they can go to school and have stationery and stuff like that. This is specifically for them and we've been supporting them for a number of years."

She said they would collect all the funds raised and post them off today.