One pupil at east Auckland’s Saint Kentigern School has raised $10,000 to assist youngsters within the Pacific by means of the World Imaginative and prescient 40 Hour Problem.
And the college’s youthful yr teams collectively raised greater than $147,000 for the trigger.
When 17-year-old Mia Denholm walks by means of the gates of Saint Kentigern School, she carries together with her extra than simply books and a faculty bag – she additionally carries a calling.
It’s a calling to advocate, encourage, and do her half, irrespective of how small it might appear, to assist youngsters across the world whose lives look very totally different from her personal.
This yr, that calling culminated in one thing extraordinary when Mia singlehandedly raised $10,000 for the World Imaginative and prescient 40 Hour Problem.
That incredible effort led a wave of scholar participation at her college and reminds Kiwi youth all over the place that significant change can start with only one one that decides to say “sure”.
Mia first took half within the World Imaginative and prescient 40 Hour Problem when she was in yr 7, teaming up together with her two greatest buddies to go 40 hours with out private area.
The trio tied themselves along with an elastic rope, an amusing problem for 3 12-year-olds who had been decided to tackle the world.
This yr, her closing yr of college, the three reunited to repeat the problem, however with a really totally different sense of objective.
“It was an actual full-circle second,” Mia says. “After we did it in yr 7, it was all about enjoyable – we wished to exit in public, go to the flicks, all tied collectively.
“However this yr, we understood a lot extra about what we had been fundraising for. It turned about greater than enjoyable. It was about making an affect.”
Mia’s ardour for the World Imaginative and prescient 40 Hour Problem was impressed by watching her older sisters participate yearly, main her to observe of their footsteps as soon as she reached intermediate college.
However the actual turning level got here a lot earlier, throughout a service journey that opened her eyes in a method few experiences may.
“Once I was about yr 6, I went to the Philippines with my mum,” she says.
“We visited the garbage dumps there, and I noticed first-hand how youngsters, youngsters even youthful than me, had been dwelling.
“That modified all the things for me. I realised how insanely fortunate I’m for the life I get to dwell.”
As one in every of her college’s Service Prefects this yr, Mia was decided not simply to take part within the Problem however to spark a schoolwide motion.
She helped organise a faculty social and a bake sale with yr 7 and eight college students, each of which raised funds for the World Imaginative and prescient 40 Hour Problem.
She additionally visited courses to show youthful college students how you can efficiently fundraise – how you can ask, who to ask, and sharing why their efforts matter.
The varsity’s youthful yr teams raised an astonishing quantity – almost $100,000 collectively, demonstrating what can occur when college students really feel motivated, supported, and related to a trigger larger than themselves.
Mia credit her $10,000 raised to her “no stone unturned” strategy to fundraising.
“I contacted actually each particular person in my telephone and in my mum’s, and my dad’s, and my sisters’,” she laughs.
“Persons are typically scared to ask, however I at all times say, ‘It’s going to such an unimaginable trigger. Why wouldn’t individuals need to assist, even just a bit?’”
