Service Opportunites

Service is one of the six touchstones of Aquinas College. As such we encourage all our students to be involved in service at home, at school and in the community. Two key initiatives are the Service Day for all students in the community, and the Aquinas Service project for senior students.

Service Day

As from 2008 all staff and students provide a full day of service to some group in the community. In 2008 about 3500 hours of service was completed on July 1st. Feedback from many groups in the community was extremely positive. The students also were pleased to be able to provide worthwhile service to many deserving individuals and groups.
Click here to read about Service Day 2009.

Aquinas Service Project (ASP)

The purpose of the Aquinas Service Project (ASP) is for each student entering Year 12 and 13 to identify, design, carry out and reflect on one example of personal own service within the community. Service may be carried out within or outside school community, and should be of at least 20 hours duration excluding planning, evaluation and reporting. Engaging in this project should improve students' research and reporting skills, their ability to evaluate their contribution to service to others. In turn the community benefits from a wide range of service provided. The school will report each student's contribution in his/her school testimonial.

Philosophy behind the Project

This project is based on the belief that all members of a community have a responsibility to each other, and that everyone should see that voluntary work or service is of value to the person doing the service, and to the recipients. Christ is seen as the prime exemplar of providing service to others. In committing to this project, students will gain worthwhile skills including self reflection; they will understand more about at least one other institution, and will understand one important component of good citizenship and what it means to be Christian.

Example of service projects:

Service Day 2009

Closing the College for a day to allow all students and staff to engage in working in the community is a bold but crucial statement of our religious faith. It is designed partly to provide help for those in need but also to allow our students to understand that what we will all ultimately be judged on, when we stand before those Pearly Gates, is how well we lived out Christ’s demand to help ‘the least of these brothers and sisters of mine’.

The projects chosen were many and varied but included a group of 12 students who went to Orange Grove Retirement Village to interview a number of the residents about their lives. The students ranged from Y8 to Y13. They were amazed to hear of the stories the people told about happenings long before they were born.
service day 2009 Having completed the interviews the students returned to school and wrote up the interviews and produced a booklet which included some of their favourite photographs of significant times in their life. These booklets were received by the residents with great delight.

One group of students spent the day helping to landscape the grounds around the new Catholic Church in Katikati. The aches and pains resulting from the shifting of huge quantities of earth were somewhat eased by the warmth of the welcome and the size of the morning tea and lunch that were kindly provided by parishioners! The 1st XV rugby team did excellent work teaching reading, maths and rugby skills in local primary schools while another enthusiastic group collected mountains of rubbish from the dunes and beaches. The Arts faculty worked once again at Bethlehem Primary School where they completed a wonderful backdrop to the latest drama production.
service day 2009Service Day We even had one group tidying up grounds and gravestones of the Catholic cemetery. Well done to all those who so generously gave their time, talent and energy to help other people. Bless you for your efforts.