This year a group of community-minded Rangi students have introduced a new service award for all Year 9 to 13 students.

Last year a group of Year 12 Global Living students (led by Sophie Pye, Luka Simmers and Fran Gallaway) decided to do something about ensuring that Rangi students were more involved in helping people in our community who maybe aren’t as fortunate as we are and who need our time, help, and love. While looking into this they came across a newly-launched award called the Student Volunteer Army Service Award. This is a nationally-recognised award which encourages students to give back to their community. Students enter their service hours online on the SVA website, aiming to achieve a series of badges: ‘Member’ which is 5 hours, ‘Bronze’ , - 32 hours, ‘Silver’, - 250 hours, and ‘Gold’, - 500 hours.

The SVA organisation began in response to the Christchurch earthquakes when a student named Sam Johnson helped mobilise 11,000 student volunteers who spent a total of 75,000 hours cleaning up liquefaction silt across the city. The SVA continued to give support during New York and Japan’s tough times in recent years and assisted during many local emergencies such as the Port Hills fire, the Kaikoura earthquakes and the horrific mosque attack. This movement is helping influence the future of volunteering to create healthier communities. On the SVA website, students are asked to align their service to appropriate Sustainable Development Goals (a list of globally-recognised priorities).

This year we have introduced the SVA Service Award to Years 9 to 13 students and we are encouraging them all to achieve the first badge (Member) this year and aim to achieve the next one (Bronze) next year and gradually build up their Service hours during their time at Rangi. In addition to explaining to all year levels how this new system works, the original ‘SVA group’ have created a page on Rangi Life which provides information on lots of different service opportunities both in and out of school. The Senior Councils are also each creating a community service event throughout the year, so that students love by giving, and laugh with their friends whilst doing it (a reference to this year’s school theme ‘Live, Laugh, Love’).

Our Head of Service, Phoebe Sugrue, is very excited about this new award as it ties in with our vision for service this year, ‘global good, local love’, all about thinking globally but acting locally. Through this award we are also wanting to give students great opportunities to make local change while promoting the change we want to see globally. Last year, Year 12 students contributed an amazing 4500 + hours of service. That’s over two whole working years of service! This year as a school we are aiming to do more than 8,000 hours of service and really do our bit in helping our community.