Kalinda Parents and Friends
Kalinda Parents & Friends President’s Report 2024 - Outgoing Presidents report.
It’s been a busy year for the Kalinda Parents & Friends Committee, where we called upon all the various talents and skills of our team and wider community to create special, memorable events for our parents, students, teachers, and friends.
Foundation Morning Tea started our year with a bang where we warmly welcomed an enthusiastic crowd of new Kalinda parents to the stadium kitchen for cups of Tea, Coffee, biscuits, a few tears, and a lot of laughs too!
Open Classrooms was also a busy event where the team and many helpers cooked a delicious BBQ for the community while the students showed off their new classrooms. Many thanks to all our enthusiastic helpers.
Easter Raffle is always a major event of the year which is excitedly anticipated by the students. The community donates generously in chocolate and gifts and the team works hard to create many fabulous prizes. We love to see the smiles of the winners and it’s always an exciting end to a long first term for many.
Term 2 Brought Open Night and our goal was to be the friendly welcoming face to the community as they entered by offering complimentary refreshments at the main office. This enabled us to interact with the community and meet many new faces in our distinctive P&F denim Aprons!
Mother’s & Father’s Day Stalls are running like clockwork as we finetune the event through the years. This year we made small adjustments in the preparation of vouchers for the children to use rather than tokens, and with the help of the Ellen & Amelia’s sewing skills we were able to present all the stock beautifully with brand new contrasting white and coloured tablecloths, with pricing attached. Hopefully it’s an investment for the next 10 years of Kalinda P&F.
Trivia Night was our biggest event of the year which we took on as there was no council fundraising committee in 2024. With much enthusiasm all our members chased down donations from local businesses for prizes and silent auctions, decorations and centrepieces were created, hosts liaised with, and venues booked, and changed…, and booked! It was a surprising but exciting step to have to move venues to welcome more of our community after effectively selling out tickets and tables in 2 days! The event was a huge success raising a generous amount of money for the school and by also gathering a large group of our community together, at something which hasn’t been done at Kalinda since COVID cancelled many large social events.
Term 3 focus was our student Disco with an amazing “Under the Sea” theme! The students couldn’t contain their excitement as they walked into the stadium and saw giant jellyfish, schools of fish on the walls, a balloon arch, Amelia’s amazing 3D coral reef plus Amanda’s beautifully crafted welcome sign full of sea puns and gorgeous colours. Thank you to all of those in the Disco decoration committee for your hard work.
Colour Run came up quickly in Term 4 under the direction of Jo, and the team came together to put together an even better event than 2023 with powder and slime to make the kids even messier! The students thoroughly enjoyed watching their teachers get “slimed” and our generous number of volunteers on the day helped to make pack-up swifter than we’d planned.
Despite the focus being on fun this year rather than fundraising, we were still able to raise around $8000 from the Colour Run, much of which will help to support our 2025 events and future contributions such as the Graduation Fund Donation we commit to each year as well as investments into P&F equipment and supplies such as our purchase of a Marquee and the Fabric for Tablecloths in 2024.
We were also able with monies raised from the work of our P&F Committees over the last few years, to purchase two new Gaga Pits for the school which were installed late 2024 and are providing great new play spaces for the students of Kalinda to play “Gaga Ball”, a game that many students have played and enjoyed on school camps. Thank you to Donna for taking great care of our treasury requirements in 2024!
As Ellen co-ordinates weekly Icy-Pole sales and volunteers on Wednesdays to bring our kids something special on these hot days, we round out our year on P&F with the Kalinda Carols event where we organise and provide Food Trucks for the community, decorate, and assist with the BBQ set-up for our teachers.
My biggest thankyou to the 2024 P&F Executive Committee; Ellen, Amanda, Donna and shadow treasurer Jo, and our wider general members who have worked so tirelessly to make these events happen and have been the absolute core of planning, co-ordination with the school, physical work and hours given and many emails with businesses, families and teachers. These events simply would not have happened without you. It’s been an absolute privilege to work with you and learn from you all.
I wish the whole 2025 Committee all the best for the year ahead and welcome our new members on board!
Fiona Majstorovic Kalinda P&F President 2024
