Recycling for Refugees

Dear SKiPPS community,

Thank you for the opportunity to present at the school assembly a few weeks ago, and for allowing me to run my latest initiative – Recycling for Refugees – through your wonderful school. 

Before we go further, I would like you to watch a little film I made with my brother, about sorting a lot of cans in a nearby public park, and it includes a few FILM STARS from your school! They are all very special people, and were such great helpers, and I love how one of them has MESSI on the back of the top she’s wearing. It makes me smile.

Please share the film with others if you can, it will help me and my brother to help spread a message.

A little story about sorting a lot of cans. (youtube.com)

My name is Dugald and last year a bunch of SKiPPS students helped me build the chicken house at your school (and yes, with the help of one of your dads, the wonderful Mat Gdanitz, I’ll be helping to make an even better film, starring big cast of children you all know!). 

But for now, I’ve committed to raising $5000 through recycling mostly cans and plastic bottles, to help welcome to Melbourne and support an Afghan refugee family (a 39-year-old widowed mother of five, currently displaced in Iran), arriving in August. If you would like to know more about our group, or help us directly (all donations over $2 are tax deductible), please see our fundraising page here: Shout For Good

Otherwise, PLEASE pop a can or plastic bottle or beer bottle in the two collection tubs I have made for your school. NO wine bottles, please. Get your child to look for the 10c logo on all eligible containers (it’s in very small print), which include most juice and flavoured milk boxes, ALL aluminium cans, and soft drink and beer bottles. Do a maths equation with your kids (addition or multiplication), start a running tally with your family!

Your school has raised $78.90 already - $55.20 from bags of cans donated generously from the school fete, and 237 eligible items a ‘counting club’ of children helped me sort and tally last week. I’ve challenged the school to raise $500 for this cause, and are keen for this initiative to then raise funds for other good things, which we can discuss. I have ideas, which involve trying to enhance the lives of children, at your school.

But for now, we have a job to do! 

Collect cans! Bring beer bottles into school! Sort out all the plastic containers! Keep tallying up our totals – we will get there, I know we will!

I will be writing updates and reminders in at least the next two newsletters, and if any are hosting a BIG party that generates a lot of recyclable items, let me know. Also, a shout out to two SKiPPS dads. Scott at the St Kilda Bowling Club next door, he’s let me set up this scheme there (last week I gave them a mention on national radio!), and another dad put me in contact with The Cross, a Scottish pub on Fitzroy Street, where I’ve started collecting their containers. Please drink up, with them!

It takes a village, et cetera, and THANK YOU to all who choose to be involved, helping me to help others, and on this occasion – a family who likely need it more than any of us.

Dugald

0425 005 531