Gold Duke of Edinburgh award recipient
Glen Waverley campus Year 12 student, Sarah Colahan, has achieved a gold award in the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme. Over the past four years, Sarah has combined countless hours of physical activity, skills, adventurous activities and a major residential project in Africa, to get her to this point. Like many other girls her age, Sarah has played netball and learnt a musical instrument, both skills which have helped her achieve the Physical Activity and Skill components required to advance through the award scheme.
The Adventurous/Journey components have been fulfilled via expeditions to local places such as Warrnambool, and to places as far away as Tanzania. A Service component was accomplished when Sarah received a Government funding grant to enable her to run a dance project for Africans within her own community.
Sarah’s largest and most impressive project was her four weeks volunteering at Forever Angels Orphanage in Africa, as part of her Residential Project. Sarah raised the funds to get there herself through part-time work, and also made a donation of $2,000 to the orphanage from fundraising raffles, cake stalls, saxophone busking and even through staff morning teas.
The orphanage doesn’t usually accept volunteers younger than 21 years of age, but the persistence of the then 16 year old paid off, and she was accepted, along with her mother Deb (a school nurse at Wesley), who also volunteered her vital nursing skills.
Sarah had not been overseas before, and so had a lot to learn about getting a passport, visas and the vaccinations required. She spent a great deal of time researching all of this, and documented it all in a 50 page submission as part of the Duke of Edinburgh gold award.
Participating in the Duke of Edinburgh scheme, and in particular the volunteer work in Africa, has proved to be an immensely rewarding and life-changing experience for Sarah, who now sees the world in a different light, “I realise how lucky I am to have an education; that we should never take anything for granted; objects or materialism and money do not always bring happiness; poverty will only decrease if we help people to make changes themselves and, if you really want to achieve something you can, as anything is ‘doable’…you just have to take that first step.”
After Year 12, Sarah plans to return to volunteer at the Forever Angels Orphanage and her ambition is to set up a hospital fund for children. Long term she hopes to work in the area of overseas aid, and at this stage is looking a number of options including international studies, teaching or midwifery.
