World Vision Senior Scholarship Award

More than a third of the entire student body at Rangi Ruru Girls’ School took part in this year’s World Vision 40 Hour Famine after a hugely successful participation campaign led by two of the senior students.

The outstanding effort by Lily Lee and Willa Jones, both members of the school’s service council, resulted in Rangi Ruru being recognised as one of New Zealand’s top performing schools and being awarded a World Vision Senior Scholarship award sponsored by Sanitarium.

Director of Community Service, Tania Morgan said both of the Year 13 students very capably led the school in its fundraising drive and raised more than $3500 to support the plight of Syrian child refugees.

“Willa and Lily were instrumental in Rangi Ruru receiving the scholarship and this achievement is a real credit to them and the work of the school’s Service Committee to get the school on board with this initiative,” said Ms Morgan.

After a lengthy selection process, Flossie van der Pol (Year 12) was chosen as the recipient of the scholarship which enabled her to four days of global education, leadership development and social action training in Auckland during the Term 3 school holidays (3 – 6 October).

“I had an amazing time and loved meeting other students from around New Zealand who shared my vision for making as much of a difference as possible in the lives of people in need. Meeting refugees at the Refugee Resettlement Camp (in Auckland) was really eye-opening as I could see how much they appreciated having security after their years of extreme hardship,” said Flossie.

As part of the week, the students attended a World Vision/ Sanitarium Awards dinner where they accepted the awards for their schools. The dinner was an enlightening experience for all guests as a number of speakers shared their stories relating to their work for World Vision.

ENDS