Magazine 2017

Interact Workshop, Secondary Faculty Parklands College It has been another exciting year of blessing those in dire need of the basics. However, sometimes we were privileged to spend time with so many who just need a human touch. At the end of last year we ended off our outreach with our annual Santa Shoebox Collection. The Interact Club also assisted with the Rotary Club of Blouberg’s Christmas Party for approximately 350 underprivileged children. This year we managed to supply over 14 charities with a bit of Easter joy as our annual Easter egg collection was so well supported. Our annual Interact Camp gave our learners the opportunity to support 3 charities over a long weekend up the West Coast. This project as a whole won us the coveted Rotary District 9350 best Interact Project Award. This award is presented to one of the 119 schools with an Interact Club, in the area. We have also started with a monthly sanitary product drive to support the learners attending high schools in Dunoon. One of the big initiatives has been to challenge the members of Interact to come up with and complete their own projects in their own time. 16 individual and unique charity projects were undertaken by over 80 learners. These include making sandwiches for an underprivileged school, painting a ward in a disabled home, as well as running an aftercare session at a local children's centre, to name a few. We have also made a few visitations including a trip to the Dunoon Clinic in order to drop off knitted items which will be distributed to the mothers of newborn babies. Our bi-annual West Coast Interact Workshops have been a great success, allowing us to share outreach ideas and plans with other local schools. This is a great way for community-minded learners to collaborate and arrange inter-school projects. We will soon be expanding our workshops to assist new Interact Clubs in the area. As well as being an amazing social, sporting, cultural and academic event, ParkFest was also a great fund raising opportunity. Our Interact Club ran a very successful tuckshop and ‘Kiddies Corner’, raising money for our 4 selected charities, namely SANCCOB, FDSA Velddrif, The Sunflower Fund and The Lucky Lucy Foundation. The day after ParkFest our Interact Club ran a stall at the One-2-One event for the mentally handicapped people of Cape Town, alongside other charity organisations, managing to provide a day of fun to 2700 people. Our stall comprised of three carnival style games with prizes of knitted items, snacks and sweets, all of which was thoroughly enjoyed by the guests. Our annual Sunflower Day was extremely successful this year. All of the learners were encouraged to wear TOPEs (The new Sunflower Bandana) as well as take part in the Sunflower events. These were run by our three Sunflower Ambassadors; Cecilia van der Walt, Caleigh Wehmeyer and Mia Laubenheimer, and comprised of a Wishing Fountain and Cake Sale. All proceeds went to the Sunflower Fund. 140 Parklands College, Twentieth Edition, 2017