By Jed Lanyon
After seeing the devastation of last month’s storms on the Yarra Ranges community, Wandin North Primary School students decided they wanted to help those in their community who were doing it tough.
Junior school council organised a free dress day allowing students to dress in their pyjamas, while encouraging classmates to bring in non-perishable foods and goods to be donated to those in need.
From canned food, long life milk, torches, batteries, hot water bottles, board games, and much more, the school filled their office foyer with goods that were recently taken to Kalorama and Mt Dandenong by principal Paul Bailey.
He spoke of the school’s efforts to rally behind those in need after 9 June.
“As a principal, it makes you really proud that we’ve got a great community that really looks after each other, whether we have families that are out of power looking out for each other in helping students get to school and helping with meals and then we as a school seeing how we can help others.
“Throughout the last week of term we did a donation drive for goods and we filled our whole office foyer. It shows that some of our families are amazingly generous.
“With the recent storms, a lot of our community was affected, but not so much like up in the Dandenongs. We had a number of families without power for a week and we had to hire generators for the school.”
Thankfully the school avoided any major damage from the storms.
“We were lucky, we did have a lot of trees uprooted, but it didn’t impact on buildings and play equipment. We did have to hire a big industrial generator for three days after we came back following lockdown. It was very cold but we got the school up and going as best we could.”
Mr Bailey said the decision to source a generator for power was one to boost the morale of staff and students in a difficult time.
“It was to provide a warm environment for staff and students, when they might not have been able to have that at home. That was really important for us in our students returning to school.”
Mr Bailey said acts like these are an important experience for the students.
“For the children to be able to give without the expectation of receiving, it sets a good tone and a good environment as a school in terms of that selfless side for the children to learn as they become young adults. That’s what we’re trying to set up here at Wandin North, that selfless attitude and community spirit.”
