From the Director of Identity

The Joy of Easter

As we draw this Term to a close, we prepare to celebrate the pinnacle of life as a Catholic Christian community. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that “Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.” (1817) Too often we think that we ourselves are in control of everything, but the reality is that, even when we have success, the conditions to enable that success are there. We believe that is grace working in our world. We trust that the Holy Spirit will inspire us to cooperate with the work of salvation in the world today. We are all always growing in faith and the Lenten journey helps us to realise that we can always start again. What a wonderful opportunity!

Student Leadership

Over the past two weeks, the Identity Team has been working on the Tread Lightly Campaign, Year 10 CSL Placements, The Duke of Edinburgh Award Program, a whole school Assembly highlighting student leadership initiatives and the Caritas Project Compassion social justice campaign, engaging with the two feet of social justice, charity and advocacy.

Marcus Stevanoski – Sustainability
Sustainability Matters!!
CONGRATULATIONS everyone for recycling over 1000 shoes in the TreadLightly Shoe Campaign.

EcoERC and the Sustainability Prefecture are excited to announce impressive results from one of the first SRC campaigns of the school year. The ‘TreadLightly’ Shoe Drive, run by organisation Australian Sporting Goods Association (ASGA), was held at Edmund Rice College from Tuesday 22 to Friday 25 March, with promotion beginning weeks prior.

The annual TreadLightly School Recycling Drive calls on schools around the country to register, collect old and unused shoes, and donate. ASGA plays an important role in keeping shoes out of landfill, by recycling the materials and turning them into brand new sporting equipment, gym mats and playground flooring. Supported by major brands like Adidas, Asics, Converse and JD Sports, TreadLightly offers amazing prize packs to the schools who donate the most amount of shoes in the one-week period. Excitement within student year groups was growing, with an increase in attendees at the EcoERC lunchtime meetings preceding the collection week.

To promote the activity, promotional slides were prepared for TV screens around the school, posters were printed and placed on classrooms, a speech was made in the prior week’s assembly, and regular announcements through email and the PA system were made. On the first day of collection, a growing group of SRC members including Sustainability Prefect Marcus Stevanoski and Social Justice Prefect Matt Armitage walked around to every classroom in the school, collecting shoes from students. “It was really exciting to see how many boys and teachers got involved and really stepped up to this initiative, with some individually bringing in more than three bags full of shoes”, said Marcus. “I honestly can’t recall a recent SRC campaign as successful as this one”.

The counting process was made easier by the dozens of volunteers willing to help place all the shoes in boxes. Over 700 individual shoes were collected just on the first day, and by day three, students and staff had amassed a total of over 1,000 shoes. Sustainability Teacher Mrs Schodde, who registered the school in the campaign and organised the collection, worked by collecting the names of all the students who donated and granting CSL hours – community service merits. “The incentive to donate shoes by rewarding students with CSL hours and points towards their house really got everyone excited, as well as the chance of winning the brilliant prize packs organised by ASGA”, said Mrs Schodde. “However the most important part is that all of this material will be recycled and saved from landfill. Students and staff alike thought the concept was outstanding, giving them a chance to clear out their old shoes for a worthy cause”.

Sustainability is essential to the College, which is known for their annual multi-school Sustainability Conference which has seen speakers such as Gardening Australia’s Costa Georgiadis and Rebecca Sutcliffe deliver presentations about reducing waste at schools. Edmund Rice also conducts the biannual Waste Audit, which sees student volunteers spending the day collecting data about the types of waste the school recycles and puts in general waste.

With the donation of the shoes scheduled for Monday 28 March, students are still not showing signs of slowing down, with Friday’s total sitting at 1081 The TreadLightly campaign has not only boosted morale at Edmund Rice College, but it has increased house spirit, and most importantly, has got boys talking about the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling.

Don’t forget you can also recycle your used batteries at the College in the Nahandra Learning Centre. Our ‘Return and Earn’ program has been a little slow however, you can contribute to recycling your appropriate bottles, cans and juice boxes by going along to St Vinnies at Unanderra Depot and letting them know you would like to donate your funds to the EcoERC Sustainability Team.

ERA for Change

As part of our commitment to Caritas and the importance that the Pope and our own Bishop Brian have placed on caring for the environment, we have been supporting the Caritas Project Compassion Tonga Appeal. During our Extended pastoral Care lesson this week, all students and staff participated in a lesson to consider how we are contributing to making the world a place where all may ‘have life to the full.’ We had a video message from Senator Zed Seselja, Minister for the Pacific, encouraging us to remain engaged with this issue and we used Bishop Brian’s pastoral letter from October to remind everyone of our responsibility in this regard, as members of a Catholic community. We learned about the Sustainable Development Goals and we were given an opportunity to write a postcard to a politician, either to thank them for what they are doing or to call on them to consider all ‘future generations’ in their decisions, as this is the Project Compassion theme for 2022. Students have one more week to contribute to the appeal on Friday, April 8. Thank you to all the families who have supported this campaign.Year 9 Indigenous Cultures Day

On Monday 21 March we had a local Aboriginal organisation, Gumarra, come out to the school and work with the Year 9 cohort for the Indigneous Cultures Day. Gumarra and their staff members Sam, Taye and Uncle Richard delivered a range of activities teaching students about traditional Dharawal knowledge surrounding bushtucker, weapons, fishing artifacts, boomerang throwing, yidaki connections to our dreamtime stories and traditional dances. ERC would like to thank Gumarra staff for coming out on Monday and sharing their knowledge and culture with our students.

“I found it to be a great learning experience and fun to learn about Aboriginal culture” – (Jesse)
“I learnt a lot about Indigenous heritage and their ways of life many years before British civilisation. This included bush medicines, hunting techniques and tools, cultural dancing, welcoming and cleansing through a smoking ceremony. I think it was a good day to appreciate and acknowledge the ancestral owners of the land we stand on today which takes us back at least 60,000 years”. – (Lucas)
“I really got a great amount of information out of the day and it makes me want to learn more about the First Nations people” – (Tristan)
“The Day was enjoyable and was a good learning experience” – (John-Paul)