P&C Presentation Day Speech 2022
On behalf of the Griffith North Public School Parents and Citizens Association I would like to congratulate all our students on a wonderful year of achievements, learning and growth. The administration, teaching and support staff work tirelessly to support our school and our P&C work and we to thank you all.
The P&C would like to offer our sincere thanks to Miss Bourne and Miss Remke and staff. We appreciate your support in all aspects of what we do.
Through our various fundraisers through the year including the annual Lamington drive, Easter Raffles, Trivia Night and Auction, Bbq’s, Cake stalls, Pizza and Pasta drive and Mother and Father’s Day stalls we as a school community have raised over $25,000. The lamington drive in 2022 involved an amazing crew of 48 volunteers who came and rolled and dunked and packed our way to a $12,000 profit. The trivia night was a huge success with generous donations from the community and an excellent MC. Together we laughed and shared a wonderful evening after a long break from school activities to raise $9,000 for the school. The P&C in the past two years have invested in two new cooled bubblers one for each playground. We look forward to both these activities happening again in 2023.
The GNPS P&C is in the unique position of operating and managing a 5 day a week canteen service for our school. The introduction of the online ordering system has enabled families to plan and order in advance. We thank families for their patience as we implemented the new system for both the canteen and for fundraising activities online. We are super proud to offer a healthy options canteen service and support the school as the engine room for student health and wellbeing. A big thanks to Paulina, Heather and Linda for your contribution. Your teamwork and ability to serve our hungry children their lunches in a very short time frame is appreciated. The P&C would also like to acknowledge our volunteers in the canteen. To give your time is the most precious gift we can give and we thank Megan, Erin, Emily, Liz. Rachel and Mikaela for your continued support. We are keen to have more volunteers in the canteen in 2023, even an hour is of great assistance.
This year we were successful in being the recipient of a Woolworths Junior Landcare Grant. Investing this grant together with the hard work of students and the P&C, means three new vegetable beds and a potting bench have been installed and the area given a clean-up. It is now ready for students to produce lots of delicious foods and beautiful flowers while learning about plants and the insets which help them grow. A big thank you to Mrs Cameron for her enthusiasm with the green mean machine, to Janelle Ruggeri who guided us through the project and completed the reporting and to Liz Johnstone and Claire Laurie who donated their time and expertise to make it happen. We recognise that P&C meetings are not always possible for parents and we encourage contributions of many types. A great example of this is the Facebook page we started this year. I would like to thank Leah Walsh for her invaluable contribution to the posts on the page. Your skills are greatly appreciated and this is her way of giving to the P&C and it is superb.
If I could please ask Tracey Ciampa, Guy Sanson, Joanne Tarbit, Liz Johnstone and Tahnee Jamieson to the stage for a presentation. Our P&C has been fortunate to have families involved with the school for many years and we would like to acknowledge and share our absolute thanks for your contributions. These families together have donated hours of time to support our school and we are very grateful to you all for your always positive and productive contributions. Together this group have held executive positions and donated many goods to the school fundraising efforts. We thank you for your generous contribution to our community through GNPS and wish you all the best info your future.
There are two special P&C members that I would personally like to thank and acknowledge for their behind the scenes work for our school. Without these two team members, I couldn’t do what I do for the P&C. To Michelle Litchfield and Ashley De Paoli, I am so grateful to you both. Your dedication to the P&C is incredible and all with such grace, patience, and skill and at all hours of the day and night. My heartfelt thank you.
To our wonderful Year 6 of 2022, you have made a lasting impression on our school that you should be so proud of. You have been wonderful advocates for the school in our wider community and we wish you all the best for the future. We hope you continue to keep supporting and doing volunteer work in your lives as you go forward. We thank all our families for your contribution to the success of P&C. To those who have bought raffle tickets, filled their freezers with pizza’s and especially to families who have made donations – thank you. We have had a huge number of business and personal supporters in 2022 and it is because of your generosity we can raise the funds we do.
Finally, I would like to ask parents and families to consider becoming a part of the P&C in 2023. Our next meeting is tomorrow night at the school staff room at 7.15pm and all are welcome. What starts as a new idea in our team gathers all our energy and inspiration and we can, together, turn it into amazing outcomes as we have seen this year. Being a volunteer is a great gift to others and I do hope you consider being part of our team. Thank you
Cate Yates (President)
