A group of students from Good Shepherd Lutheran College have been working towards a service learning project with local charity Youturn Youth Support.
All Year 11 students at the College were given an opportunity to select a service project that was of interest to them as part of their Curriculum Support program.
This particular project involved visiting the Youturn centre in Tewantin to learn about their work in the local community, and then students acted upon the facts that they learned by contributing meals to the emergency relief supplies for Youturn to distribute as needed.
Head of Senior Years Studies at Good Shepherd Matt Armstrong said, “Caring for the wellbeing of others and engaging in community service is something that Good Shepherd takes very seriously and purposely includes in the learning programs.”
“It was great to see how enthusiastic the students were and proud to see how their learning was having a positive effect on those less fortunate in the local community.”
Youturn is a not-for-profit that was started 30 years ago to help address youth homelessness in the Noosa region.
Since then, the organisation has grown substantially, working with young people and those that support them, expanding their focus to include child safety, mental health, suicide prevention and of course homelessness.
Youturn now works at 14 locations across Southern Queensland with a staff base of 180 employees and last year helped over 6,800 young people.
The meals that were provided by the Year 11 students will be used for the emergency relief for people that contact Youturn for support.
These people can be experiencing temporary or ongoing homelessness, significant financial or personal hardship, or challenging personal circumstances.
The meals provide an opportunity for them to connect with Youturn as an organisation to work towards accessing suitable support.
Youturn provides over 3000 meals per year to people between the ages of 16 and 25 in the local community.
The College was also lucky to be supported by Fresh and Save, who donated 10kg of mince to be used for the bolognaise that students cooked.
Fresh and Save came on board to support our project through the contact of Hospitality teacher Ms Lucy Barnes, who worked with the College in Term Two to support the project.
The College is looking forward to further opportunities to engage their students in ongoing service-learning activities.
