REGROW Conjola: Service Project (Stage 3)
The service programme is for students in Years 5 and 6 and happens on a Friday afternoon. The class and Mr Thompson work to provide service to groups of people in our local community such as providing stay-safe cards to the members of our local nursing home. This term we are going to help our regional community through the aftermath of the devastating bushfires that hit us at the start of 2020.
The way we are doing our bit for bushfire affected areas is working hand in hand with Convoy of Hope. Convoy of Hope is an organisation that helps communities in need and is delivering essential goods to bushfire affected areas, such as generators and, most importantly, hope. Their motto is “to bring help and hope to those who are impoverished, hungry and hurting” and they have been doing this since 1994. What we’re doing with Convoy of Hope is helping to regrow Conjola after the bushfires, by delivering and planting nine hundred native plants in the Conjola area.
In the second week of term, the students in the service programme congregated and trooped down to the agricultural plot to meet Mr Thompson and a truck full of 900 tube stock plants. Mr Thompson introduced us to an agent from Convoy of Hope, Kevin Cassanego. Mr Cassanego showed us the truck filled with the 900 tube stock plants and talked to the service programme about what we will be doing this term. Mr Cassanego said that we are all stewards in God's hope and that we must help the planet to flourish and thrive and that is what Convoy of Hope is all about. Convoy of Hope has been working with Conjola to donate money and other essentials. Conjola, he said, had been without electricity for two weeks and was only just recovering from the devastating bushfires that hit them earlier in the year.
By the time we finish nurturing and looking after these plants, the Conjola community will be ready to restore their gardens and surrounding bushland. The Conjola community requested native plants that were not large trees so that if they have another bushfire, it won't be as severe as the fires were in January 2020. Kevin Cassanego also told us that the world needs one trillion more trees and that Convoy of Hope is doing its bit with the service programme to make the world a better place.
Our REGROW Conjola project will go for the whole of Term 3. Our goal is to grow the tube stock into larger plants before planting them in Conjola.