As we do every year during the season of Lent, here at MSJ, we have been promoting and fundraising for Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion.
Project Compassion is an ongoing commitment to show love and respect for all people of our global society and approach the unique challenges of multiple countries with open minds and open hearts. In the name of faith, justice, and peace, Project Compassion aims to fundraise and advocate for our poorest and most disadvantaged communities.
With this year’s motto encouraging us to ‘Go Further Together’, here at MSJ, we have participated in multiple fundraising acts within our community. Our fundraising efforts kicked off on Shrove Tuesday, with student leaders cooking pancakes for a gold coin donation. On Ash Wednesday, each Learning Group received their own Project Compassion box to collect donations throughout Term 1. On 16 March, the Year 11 VCAL class held a sausage sizzle for a gold coin donation with all proceeds going to Project Compassion.
Alongside these fundraising efforts, the student Social Justice team researched, prepared and distributed PowerPoint presentations on the various countries these funds will be distributed to at the end of the campaign. These presentations were shared in Religious Education classes across the school, focusing on the unique challenges present in each of these countries and among their Indigenous populations.
With Project Compassion running until the end of the first week of Term 1 Holidays, there is still plenty of time to donate towards this great cause. If you are interested in knowing more, please visit https://lent.caritas.org.au/.
We acknowledge and deeply appreciate all of the hard work, commitment and empathy that has been shown by our students, staff, and wider school community. We aim to take this energy and harness it for upcoming social justice initiatives throughout our school year.
Darcy Robinson - Faith and Identity Leader
On Thursday 5 March, our Year 12 Physics and Specialist Mathematics classes were lucky to be offered the opportunity to go to Luna Park to gain a greater understanding on the application of Physics and Kinematics in real life. The Park was closed to the public and there were hundreds of Physics students from around Melbourne in attendance.
Due to the poor weather conditions, unfortunately some rides were not available to us, however, we were able to go on the Spider, The Enterprise, Coney Drop, Dodgem Cars and Power Surge to name a few. These rides all incorporated elements of motion in their design such as circular motion, motion due to gravity, projectile motion, kinematics and mechanics. All the rides had worksheets for us to work on after going on it. This excursion enabled us to further consolidate our knowledge of the Physics and forces behind the rides which assisted us in our understanding of the fundamentals of Physics. This was a great opportunity for us to learn while enjoying our time on all the rides confirming that Physics is ‘Phun’.
By Cindy Tran (Sol3) & Laura Locke (Kin3)
On Sunday 1 March, MSJ students from Years 7 to 12 participated in the annual Clean Up Australia Day at Altona Beach. The weather was perfect, sunny and not too hot, but just enough to make sure we had sunscreen and hats, and then we were ready to go. The event was well-attended and really showed the passion our school has for improving our environment, especially our surrounding area of Altona.
The effort put in was reflected in the amount of rubbish we were able to take off the coastal reserve, most of which was rubbish that would also end up in not only the vegetation around Altona, but in the ocean.
With so many groups in motion, the target area was cleaned up as best as possible, quicker than what was expected, meaning we got to get our BBQ lunch thirty minutes early and were able to sit back and admire our hard work with all the recyclables and non-recyclable bags leaned up next to each other.
We were all very proud of our hard work and the fact that we were able to spend that time improving our world while spending time with friends. Overall, the day was a major success and will continue to be a very important day in Mount St. Joseph Girls' College's calendar in years to come.
By Libby McIntyre Year 11
