P & F Newsletter 

Hi St James Families,

The busiest time of the year is here...have you noticed! With concerts and presentations and finals and dinners and graduations and parties just a little community service reminder to find some time to breathe!!

FETE THANK YOU!

What a great day it was for our community last Saturday at the 69th St John's Parish Community Fete. It was great to see so many kids and families there enjoying the beautiful weather, rides, stalls, and performances on the stage.  

As the leader of the P&F I really don't have much to do with organising the fete apart from helping promote it and assist in seeking volunteers, as well as passing on messages about how you can support the fete. I do though run the Face Painting Stall (with Lena Zappia) as a regular parent volunteer and will let you in on a secret that while it is a long day, it really is quite an enjoyable and relaxing stall to work on! While we started the day short on volunteers, we were so grateful and heartened by the generosity of those who stayed back longer, did double shifts, and called on friends to help make things run smoothly and put smiles on the maximum numbers of kids' faces! Thank you to all the stall holders and volunteers across the day who worked hard and longer hours to make it a great day for all families and members of the community!

The BIGGEST thanks for this event goes to the St James representative on the Fete Committee, Jen Harvey who has spent her 8th year as a key person on the fete committee and puts a huge amount of work into making this day the huge success that it is! We appreciate everything you do and your amazing event planning skills that you so generously give, amongst your own very busy work and life schedule. 

FETE RAFFLE THANK YOU!

Thank you to everyone who returned their books on time. A percentage of profits raised for this goes straight to P&F fundraising so thank you to everyone who purchased or sold some raffle tickets. Congratulations to Andrea Bello (4F) and her family who won the first prize!

A very big thanks to Claire Doherty who managed the distribution and tracked the return of tickets for this raffle.

SUBWAY FOOD DAY- FRIDAY 8TH DECEMBER

We can fit one last Food Day in for the year which flyers should have come home last week.  Please get your orders for Subway Lunch in by the end of next THURSDAY 30th NOVEMBER. This is a pretty easy one for me, just pick and deliver to the school so no volunteers are required!

BAKERS DELIGHT CHRISTMAS FUNDRAISER- ORDERS DUE NEXT THURSDAY 30th NOVEMBER

Get your Christmas goodies from our Bakers Delight Christmas Fundraiser and support not only our school but a great supporter of our school events, Bakers Delight, Brentford Square! All orders are to be made by CDF Pay and will be ready to be picked up on Friday 8th December at drop off and before pick up. Orders are due in on the same day as Subway, THURSDAY 30th NOVEMBER.

CHRISTMAS RAFFLE COMING SOON!

With thanks to Natalie Lim and Jason Barrie, our Sponsorships and Donations Coordinators for 2023, we have some great prizes that have been sourced for our annual Christmas Raffle. We have something for everyone this year so keep an eye out for flyers and tickets that will be coming home this week!

Prizes include- a Christmas Lego set worth $160, a $300 Sebel Ringwood Voucher and a Pizza 72 voucher!

P&F PLANNING

As the year comes to an end, things have slowed down for the P&F but we are still hoping to get some plans in place for next year. 

AGM POSTPONED

For several reasons, we have decided to postpone this year's AGM which is usually held around this time, until early next year. As a sole leader with my own commitments and busy schedule and some big events over the next few weeks, it has been hard to find a date amongst the busy school schedule, on top of the fact that without any potential leaders and low attendance numbers it is a bit hard to run a meeting of this type. I will still be putting out a report to acknowledge all our successes this past year and all the amazing people who have contributed to running all our successful events. Rachelle the P&F Treasurer will also prepare a report outlining our financial successes over the year too.

While no leadership team has been found and many positions aren't filled, I do still need to step down and will probably need to step back more than I would like to make space for others to take ownership of this committee. I won't completely disappear and will still be here to hand over and help, but In either case, with a new team or no team, it is important to note that the P&F will likely run differently next year. 

I personally recognise that many, many more people have very busy schedules, even more so these days, and know that how the P&F has been run does require quite a bit of ongoing commitment, especially for one or two people. Even with a bigger leadership team, I feel it needs to be respected by the community that the P&F may run at a slower pace or in a different way and those that do contribute their time will need to be supported for whatever contribution they can make and how they need or want to run it. I feel it important to recognise that a new leadership team should not be expected to run it like I or others have. For those that do have expectations or would like to see certain events continue, now is your chance to to put up your hand for them!

For anyone considering getting more involved, I can also say that we are lucky at St James to have a school leadership and staff that are supportive and understanding of the limitations of volunteers and very grateful for any contributions. While the schools schedule needs to be considered, consultation is required for plans and safety etc needs to be taken into consideration, there are never any expectations on the P&F achieving a certain number of events, ticket sales or financial goals. The goal is really to do what we can to have some events to bring our community together and run things like special food days for our kids. 

Thank you to those who have signed up to help with smaller and larger, one off or ongoing roles next year.

Below is a list of positions with a description of what is involved. Names in green are of those who have kindly signed up to that role for 2024 and in red are details of how many more are needed. If you are able to help out with a role, please sign up here: volunteersignup.org/XM8MP

 P&F 2024 Position Listings.docx

Thank you for your support,

Kylie