St Peter’s College is fortunate to be a perpetual beneficiary of an extraordinary level of volunteering. While it is important to have a week that celebrates the volunteer, we equally believe that volunteers should be esteemed every week of the year.
At SPSC we recognise that volunteering represents our care for others and that we rely upon our volunteers to share the responsibility in actively assisting our community to engage, participate and belong. Time and again our students and their families have benefitted from hundreds of often unseen hours of volunteer time.
It is from our motto, ‘Pro Deo et Patria’ (For God and For Country), that our two core values of truth and service emanate. Being ‘for God’ means we are for truth. Being ‘for Country’ means we are for the service of our wider community.
We are aware our School is fortunate to enjoy the involvement of many and we thankfully acknowledge our ongoing embodiment of the 2024 theme for National Volunteer Week, ‘Something for Everyone’. For SPSC this includes parents and students who help deliver our Buddy Up and respite care programs, those involved with our Friends of Saints groups and the Mission Guild to deliver community events for all to share, as well as various musical and sporting support groups.
The Mission Guild is a wonderful example of volunteering. For over 100 years members of our School community have devoted time and faith to support the work of the Mission Guild that in turn has provided financial relief and gifts to Anglican charities, such as AnglicareSA and St John’s Mission. Their work also encourages our students to learn and value the concept of serving the needs of our wider community.
Our Friends of Saints groups are bastions of the ‘community in action’ ethos that St Peter’s College embraces, working as volunteers to ensure that every student and parent is welcomed and supported within the SPSC community.
If you have ever taken the time to volunteer, thank you. You will appreciate from that experience that volunteering can be a liberating and emotionally nourishing commitment; a teacher and provider of new skills; empowering in terms of your position in your community; a role that is able to make a genuine difference and to deliver significant outcomes; and fulfilling to meet other members of your community.
Can you imagine a community that did not have volunteering at its core?
So, to our indispensable volunteer family, from all of us who have and will continue to benefit from your contribution, thank you.
Mark Colley and Charlotte Dowling
SPSC Development Team
