By Mitchell Clarke
It’s been a tough year for Year 12 students, but an initiative by their younger counterparts has no doubt provided some much needed smiles.
Students at Nossal High School decided to do something special for their senior school buddies, after coming to the realisation that the 2020 Year 12 students had been robbed of so many experiences and milestone celebrations.
Determined to make a difference by doing something nice, Nossal students teamed up with the Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY) Casey to carry out a care package initiative.
Vice-house captains Esha Vashisht and Zarin Binte Zoha joined 10 other students in sourcing supplies for each package, which was later named the “Bag of Sunshine”.
“Inside the care package we ended up placing some cute small things, which we aimed to personalise to ensure that it would hold some meaning rather than be a general goodies bag,” Esha explained.
From locally sourced bath bombs to personalised journals from Kmart, the gift bags also included gel pens, stress balls, Oreos and personalised letters.
With a budget of just $100 from CMY Casey, the group had to be creative – and they were, receiving donations and discounts from many generous local businesses.
Both Esha and Zarin said the positive activity was felt equally by both those giving and receiving.
“There was a bunch of positive emotions – happiness, excitement, gratitude,” Esha explained.
“At first they were surprised too, as we kept this a secret from them the whole time. They were very grateful and thanked us for our efforts. They seemed happy, and it makes us happy as well knowing we got our desired reaction.
“The whole thing was just a wonder to watch. The last day for them had such a weird, tense and truly sad aura and many of them were crying. As we presented the bags, as weird as it truly sounds, we could feel the excitement and a change.
“Our hard work seriously felt like it was worth it, to see all their beautiful smiles.”
