15 / 56
FALL 2012
THE TORCH
13
The Institute’s First Student Innovation Award Presented to WalletFarm
At this year’s Upper School Awards Ceremony, the Institute at Havergal presented the
first ever Student Innovation Award to WalletFarm founders: Julia Hou, Lucy Luo,
Cynthia Zhou and Jennifer Chen. These students produced felt wallets that resemble
cows and other farm animals to raise funds for World Vision.
The purpose of this new award is to honour students whose innovative thinking has
had an impact on a social problem, a business problem or any other problem for
which a novel solution can be found. The WalletFarm group impressed the award
selection committee with the complexity of their ideas to use micro-enterprise to
support micro-enterprise. Their model is sustainable both because the animals they
purchase provide immediate and longer-term revenue to communities, enabling families to support themselves, and because
of their commitment to working with younger students to share their learning and their approach to change.
If you know a student involved in an innovative project, please send in your nomination for next year’s Innovation Award to
the Forum for Change.
Students Act Now: Student Voice and Innovation
Celebration Saturday is a long-standing Havergal tradition begun by
Old Girls and dating back many decades. All the proceeds raised at
Celebration Saturday support Havergal’s community partnerships.
Havergal’s student leaders work directly with our community
partners to identify opportunities to support our partnerships.
In the coming months, Havergal’s Community Council student
members will allocate the funds raised at Celebration Saturday
among our community partnerships. For an understanding of how
we strengthen our programs, in 2011, funds raised from Celebration
Saturday:
• provided marketing materials, costumes and equipment for
Appletree Farmers Market.
• enabled ArtHeart to run after-school programming two days per
week by supporting a stipend for staff.
• provided food and programming costs for five communal Best
Buddies events, where our students shared friendships and life
experiences with their buddies.
• sent one child to Camp Kirk, a camp for children with
disabilities, for 14 days.
• purchased a class set of 12 iPads and provided professional
development training for Derrydown teachers on applications
and functionalities of iPads at Derrydown Public School.
• provided supplies and resources for a shared project to explore
Canadian citizenship for Grenoble Public School, which is located
in Flemington Park, a community of new Canadians.
• provided graphic novels to support
the after school literacy program at
Lawrence Heights Middle School,
where our students volunteer and
work with their buddies on reading
and homework.
• provided three shelves for the books used in the literacy program
at Lotherton Pathways, a table for the ANC program space and
three tents for community festivals.
• supported Moorelands Baby Bundles Program by providing
basic baby supplies and clothes to new mothers in Flemingdon
Park.
• provided a small salary and professional development for
Siyawela Ark’s “local One Laptop Per Child hero” Portia to
develop the OLPC program, which we introduced at the
Nurturing Orphans of AIDS for Humanity (NOAH) Arks.
• provided 60 pairs of running shoes, T-shirts, books and school
supplies for the Public School location where we volunteer at the
Running and Reading Program as a part of Start2Finish.
• provided spoken word workshops, art supplies, lunches and
snacks for Trails Youth Initiatives participants in our shared
programming.
• provided new textbooks for our partner, the Whittlesea GAP
school, as a part of the Triangle of Hope program that supports
the rapidly changing curriculum in South Africa.
How Celebration Saturday Supports Our Community Partnerships