St Joey’s School Sleepout raises over $10,000 for Vinnies

A FUNDRAISING initiative that started out as a legacy dream for four St Joseph’s High School Captains has now led to the Year 12 cohort raising more than $10,000 for the St Vincent de Paul Society. 

School Captains Kelley Harris, Meg Southcombe, Aneira Bray, Zach Cadalbert were inspired to raise money for the Vinnies charity organisation after hearing a presentation on the ‘Mini Vinnies’ program at a school captains conference in Newcastle.

Meg Southcombe said the conference forced the leadership team to think about improving their fundraising efforts.

“In all honesty, we sat there thinking out school has been a bit slack in the last couple of years, we’ve done general fundraising but nothing where we’ve stepped out and done something new. I said, ‘okay let’s do a Vinnies Sleepout, let’s give it a hit,'” said Ms Southcombe.

“I guess what we were aiming to do was leave a legacy behind, something that was a Year 12 initiative; when you go to Year 12, you fundraise for Vinnies, we set that standard,” she said.

“The Vinnies Sleepout fundraiser is fully student run, the staff will be there for safety but the teachers have not been the driving force in this, it’s been the kids and that’s what we wanted,” said Ms Southcombe.

On Thursday night, the St Joseph’s Year 12 High School students will ‘Sleepout’ at their Aberdeen High School, to raise awareness for homelessness in Australia.

More than 116,000 Australians are experiencing homelessness, with 60,000 under the age of 35 and more than 17,000 under the age of twelve who don’t have a stable place to call home.

“We will be in the back of the hall for safety reasons, but I refused to let them have the heaters on,” Ms Southcombe said.

“We’ll put a movie on, play scategories, a bit of trivia and listen to reflective and guest speakers to ground us all. Jane Callaghan form Where There’s a Will Foundation will be speaking on the night and she’s an ex-Joey’s student so thats great,” she said.

“We also have twenty prizes for our general raffle and we’ll draw them on the night. It’s super exciting,” she said.

“We survived outward bound so this should be a piece of cake,” joked Ms Southcombe.

Ms Southcombe said the students have been overwhelmed with the amount of community support received, which saw them smash their initial $4,500 fundraising goal.

“I kid you not, the amount of businesses that have got involved, you could walk down Scone, Muswellbrook and Denman main streets and there would be at least ten businesses in each street that have given us a voucher for the Sleepout raffle. Vinery Horse Stud donated a $7,000 weekend away for four couples,” Ms Southcombe said.

“The teachers didn’t think we’d get to $2,500 and I walked in the other day and announced we were at ten grand. My poor Principal doesn’t know what to do with himself, but it’s good, we’re going well with it.” she said.

Those who wish to donate to the St Joseph’s High Year 12 Sleepout, click here.

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