Invictus Games Project

What an exciting and challenging project “The Shepparton High School Invictus Games” has been for our VCAL class.

After sitting down to discuss and plan this project, our group have worked all year on fine tuning to ensure everything ran smoothly. To date, every business group that we have approached for support have been fully behind our project. This has been a very pleasing aspect of our adventure.

Lovells Newsagency were the first to come on board. A simple question, asking if it was possible to have old magazines donated to our project was welcomed with open arms. There was some controversy that we didn’t foresee at first. All of the old magazines had to be returned to the publishers to be recycled. This is a national policy, which caused us some concern. Gary Lovell was able to source a locally produced magazine that the rule didn’t apply to, along with an AFL magazine. This magazine was a 2018 year edition that was being sold all year, but was designed to promote the start of the new season. The magazine wasn’t selling well as the season progressed. We were given 100 copies to use in our hamper.

Next, we thought that we would approach National Magazine Publishers, hence the Bauer Media Group was contacted at first by email, however we did not receive a response. Our teacher then telephoned the Melbourne office and left a message. Two weeks later, we received a phone call with great news. We had been offered magazines from this company and one of the teachers, Kathryn Hocking then collected them for us from their Richmond office in the September school holidays.

Miss Rees took Brandon, Loughlin and Josh to Visy Packaging in Verney Road to meet the management of Visy. They too, were really excited to come on board and support us by donating a pallet of solid packaging hamper boxes.

We contacted Pental Soaps, however we faced a few communication issues, as the company were so busy during this time. Once again, our teacher made another back up telephone enquiry and he was given an email address to forward our idea to their company. After three positive discussions with a Melbourne based Manager, we were hopeful for another generous donation. Unfortunately nothing eventuated, we didn’t get the chance to meet with anyone.

As our project was now locked in proceeding forward, our next step was to consider how we would deliver the hampers. We wanted to make the effort to do this personally, this involved seeking permission from the school leadership team. Brandon submitted an excursion application to the School Planning Committee (SPC), who then approved the go ahead for the excursion.

In May, we invited and spoke with Greater Shepparton City Council Director, Mrs Geraldine Christou and Economic Development Manager, Tony Nicolaci. They were super excited, supportive and gave us some great feedback and contacts for other businesses. Mr Squire also attended this meeting.

Before promoting our project, we spoke to the Invictus Games Organising committee, who confirmed that we needed approval from the Department of Defence. We were given Wing Commander David Worrall as a contact, and gained his approval to proceed. Look out Facebook, here we come spreading the word about our great project. David Worrall had heard that we were trying to contact the Today Show, he mentioned that he would get his media team to look into this for us. Brandon was warned to prepare himself for a television interview. Mike Dalton from Sydney 9 News spent 20 minutes discussing the project with Brandon. National Television was a result of the Australian Team Manager, David Worrall who used his media contacts to get the story on television in Sydney and NSW.

Things fell into place when we applied to Fairley’s IGA for a Community Grant. They awarded us a $1000 Community Grant to assist in our travel and accommodation costs. We intend to write to them and thank them for this grant, as well as showing them a copy of our folio to let them see what we achieved. We would also like to thank Marilyn Mancini, the Business Manager at Shepparton High School who kindly donated the $380 customer Rewards money that Fairley’s gave to our school.

We then contacted the Shepparton Newspaper and The Adviser to help promote our project. We are extremely grateful to Shepparton News who promoted our story on Saturday 13th October.

We also applied to the Regional Director of Education as our excursion was interstate. This application was completed in August. There were two large documents that we had to address for Risk Management issues relating to the excursion, along with preparing a detailed itinerary. Both were completed 10 weeks ahead of time.

Our accommodation was then booked, although we needed to make a payment to secure the booking. This was proving to be difficult due to uncertainty surrounding the approval from the Regional Director. The new Acting Principal, Julie Jerome had later given us permission to make a deposit payment on the accommodation, so that we wouldn't lose the booking. It was challenging, and we learnt that next time, we would have to get the Regional Director’s support much earlier.

We wanted to get the community and business support in place first. Fairley’s IGA Community grant was promoted to us at the same time as we started to plan the project. We only found out that we were successful in August. If they didn’t support our project, then we would need to do some serious fundraising to make the project viable and affordable to deliver.

Things all pulled together really well with SPC Factory Sales donating $1,400 of product and Ford’s Buses offered a 12 seater van and trailer for free. We had to pay for the petrol instead of the $1 / kilometre hire rate that would have needed $1800.

On Thursday the 11th of October, Mr Lythgo received an email to confirm that the Victorian Education Department had approved our excursion. We were ready to go on Monday 15th October at 6:45am. Luckily we ended up delivering the hampers ourselves as we'd planned. This wouldn't have been possible if we didn't have all the support we did.

Brandon Stoll and Taylah Cavanagh

Year 12

DELIVERING HAMPERS TO THE GAMES

The Sydney Invictus Games project was a great one and I was very excited to contribute to this project. We travelled to Sydney on Monday 14th of October. Our teachers shared all of the driving, eleven hours in total.

We tried to avoid travelling through the centre of Sydney, taking freeways that would go around the city centre. Mr Williams and Mr Lythgo were driving. They had a GPS and Mr Williams was also using his mobile phone maps The GPS was giving strange directions and Mr Lythgo threatened to throw it out. He was amazed to see hundreds of sky scrapers as we exited a tunnel into a busy freeway. We tried to change lanes but couldn’t, we ended up going back across the Sydney Harbour bridge. Within 100 metres of crossing it, we turned around then crossed the big “coat hanger” again. So much for avoiding the city. In 15 minutes we had crossed the bridge twice and also went under the Harbour in a tunnel.

We stayed at a NRMA Holiday park in Narrabeen for two nights. We were going to prepare the hampers at our park on Tuesday, but decided to repack these at the Australian Academy of Sport Recreation. We arrived an hour ahead of our scheduled visit. It was extremely busy but we found somewhere to pack the extras before we donated the hampers..

The head coach of the Australian team and Wing Commander Mr David Worrall, praised the idea of donating the hampers to the soldiers and thanked us deeply.

Brandon gave a presentation to all the Australian soldiers participating in the Sydney Invictus Games. He spoke well and summarised the project, including some of the challenges that we faced. He thanked our teachers, Danny Lythgo and Brendan Williams, the Shepparton High School, our partners, Shepparton City Council and the Australian team for having us there.

I took photos and helped the group pack the uncompleted hampers. When we handed the hampers to the soldiers, they praised us for completing this project. I had the chance to meet soldiers and chat about their life and leadership roles in different departments while serving the nation. They showed their appreciation through their constant loud applause during our speeches. I was so glad to see their reactions and responses, and I thoroughly enjoyed conversing with the other athletes.

Throughout the project I have really enjoyed being included with the amazing Year 12 students, who were positive and wanting to learn more about our Australian Invictus Games team. I admired Brandon Stoll for his leadership,and problem solving throughout the project.

As we left the Australian Academy of Sport and Recreation, we headed back to our rooms to leave the trailer at the Caravan Park. We drove to Manly, and caught the ferry from Manly to visit the Sydney Opera House. I was nervous to ride on the ferry at first, but my nerves settled once we got going. I was busy taking photos as we crossed Sydney Harbour and headed to Circular Quay. It felt amazing to travel in the harbour, to see the Opera House and the many buildings around Sydney Harbour. We took lots of photos. I am very glad that I had the chance to contribute and be involved with this great project.

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