Community
26 July, 2024
A bright, colourful day at school for Derri
DERRINALLUM P-12 College was a sea of colour for Jellybean Day last Friday.
The casual clothes day invited students to dress up as their favourite jellybean colour to mark National Diabetes Week, which runs from July 14 to July 21.
Members of the Student Representative Council (SRC) collected gold coin donations from those dressed for the day, with all funds going towards the Type 1 Diabetes Foundation.
The Type 1 Diabetes Foundation aims to raise awareness of type one diabetes through schools, medical practices and the wider community, as well as providing support to families living with the condition.
The cause is close to student Lorelai Henderson’s heart, who said the dress-up day was a good way to end the first week back at school.
“I have type one diabetes, so I can personally relate to the Type 1 Diabetes Foundation and other diabetics, and why it’s so important to raise funds and awareness for diabetes,” she said.
“I think they (the students) seemed pretty happy about it – causal day, and they got to guess how many jellybeans are in a jar.”
SRC co-ordinator Karen Saunders said the idea began through an email from a nurse offering the idea.
“We’ve now got two students who have type one diabetes,” she said.
“It’s always good to have a reminder for families to consider the effects of type one diabetes in the community.
“The fact that we could embrace the Type 1 Diabetes Foundation, who help families with new diagnosis, with a fun jellybean day and a jellybean guessing competition was a quite sensible and fun idea for the SRC to embrace.
“We raised just over $100, which for a small school is really good.”
Ms Saunders said the students “embraced” the day.
“The kids really loved dressing up in their favourite jellybean colours and having a guess at how many jellybeans were in the jar,” she said.
“It was a bit of fun for them – some were really low guesses, while others were really out-there guesses.
“It was just a fun day to end the first week back at school.
“One of our teacher aides, Zoe Ritchie, won the competition and she was quite happy to share the jellybeans.”
Principal Caitlyn Fitzgerald said she was proud of Lorelai’s promotion of the day as a school leader.
“We’ve been doing it (Jellybean Day) in conjunction with NAIDOC Week, so we’ve been running NAIDOC Week activities all week, and we decided to finish the week off with the activities and the dress-up day, so it’s a nice way to finish that without being in competition with each other,” she said.