Service and volunteering opportunities are an integral part of a Columba education. The opportunities provided focus on empowering and developing individuals to make a difference in their school and local communities and also globally, to act with compassion and understanding and without partiality and discrimination. Students actively support local, national and international charities, and most fundraising initiatives are student-led. Students are also able to serve their own school community in a variety of ways.
Service
Outreach Program
The Outreach programme includes the weekly food hamper that is sent to the local Presbyterian Support Organisation (all Year levels take turns on the weekly roster to fill the hamper); the weekly Outreach donation (students make a voluntary monetary donation to their Outreach fund which is distributed by the Student Council to charitable causes chosen by the students); collecting for various charities in the local Roslyn Village; and raising funds at times of national or international crises.
Students, and their parents, respond generously to opportunities to support special Outreach initiatives.
Community Service
As a Church School, service to others is regarded as a core element of our life together as a school community. Within the school there are a number of awards to recognise service at school. Service Award badges are awarded annually at the Internal Prize-Giving. Community service is also actively encouraged through the St. Columba Community Service Award.
St. Columba Community Service Award
In 2007 the St. Columba Community Service Award was introduced with the aim of encouraging students to become involved in service in the wider community and the world beyond school.
The rationale for the award is to engage students in new learning opportunities for care, compassion, taking on responsibilities, working with others and engaging in acts of kindness. Forms of service have included working in a rest home, taking a blind person for walks, helping an elderly lady in her own home, being involved with Volunteer Otago, helping at the SPCA, assisting with a Church Youth Group and working at Trade Aid.
Through such forms of voluntary service students have opportunities to discover something more in themselves and to make a difference to others in their need.
The St. Columba Community Service Award is granted on the basis of service beyond the school within the local community or some agreed wider project.