by St Paul's Collegiate School

Community Gala proved another fun event

Weeks of hard work paid off and St Paul’s senior students delivered another great community gala event.

It was two years ago when St Paul's hosted its last school gala, an event led by the school’s students with support from the Parents’ Association. This year another group of prefects took up the challenge to organise the 2020 gala to raise money for the school's community service initiatives.

But this event had been stalled by Covid-19 and was rescheduled three times. The event was finally held on Friday 6 November and saw many local families and children enjoy the amazing food, quality entertainment and the fun activities on offer. The students made and sold 400 donuts, 300 pulled pork rolls, 300 dumplings, 200 servings of chicken kebabs, 500 sausages, 200 toffee apples, 300 servings of chicken curry, 400 servings of nachos, 300 servings of hot chips, 100 pizzas, 500 servings of candy floss and loads of home baking. The most popular activities were hair art and henna closely followed by face painting and the bouncy castles. 

We are so grateful to Pak’nSave Kaitaia who assisted us financially to reach our fundraising goal by providing ingredients for the food on offer. And our monster garage sale was once again a success and we are grateful to those families who gave so generously - thank you!

During the process of delivering this event, the organising committee acquired a whole load of new skills which included: directing, peer managing, sorting, coordinating, corporate letter writing, fundraising, event managing and more. But the biggest part of that Friday afternoon, for which these students should be proud, were the smiles on the faces of many young children and their families from our neighbourhood who attended and participated in

The Gala, raised close to $8,000 which will be gifted next year to our two Over the Fence Ministry schools – Fairfield and Bankwood Primary Schools.

The following students, who formed the Gala committee, should be very proud of their achievement: David Koshy, Phoebe McColgan, Ben Littlejohn, Stark Sun, Ben Scanlon, Kaley Caulfield, Luke Finlayson, Matthew Forward, Sophie Stocker, and Thomas Dela Rue. They were ably mentored and widely supported by Mrs Michelle Smith, Ms Dorothy Carr Paterson and Revd Peter Rickman. St Paul’s Collegiate School are very grateful to this group and to all those who joined us on the day to celebrate the diverse community in which we operate.