What a mess!

STUDENTS in Terang and Mortlake made a big mess to celebrate raising thousands of dollars for charity.

Food fight: Terang College students unleashed their wild side as they made a mess in the name of fundraising last week.

Terang College students made their way through a wild obstacle course on the day.

Students at both Mortlake College and Terang College recently celebrated their efforts raising funds for Foodbank Victoria, with each school respectively hosting a whole-school food fight.

The Foodbank Food Fight raises money for Foodbank Victoria each year among participating schools across the state.

Students and families host fundraisers throughout term one in the lead up to a final ‘food fight’ celebration.

Of course, no real food is wasted.

The celebration saw students at both schools making their way through a fun-run styled obstacle course with faux cake mix (colour powder), jelly (slime), cordial (coloured water) and fruit (foam) creating a ‘food fight’.

The students were all smiles unleashing their wild side, but the occasion marked an important fundraiser for Victoria’s dedicated emergency food relief organisation.

Foodbank Victoria distributes more than 20 million meals to vulnerable Victorians each year, or 57,000 people each day, largely thanks to charity and school partners.

Terang College teacher Taylor ‘Rocky’ Rock said the project had been entirely student led.

“When the Food Bank Food Fight fundraiser came across our desk we thought it would be a great opportunity to give back to Food Bank, who actually provide food to the school for our breakfast clubs in the morning,” she said.

“The kids then organised everything.”

Among the students organising the event was Year 12 VCE student Mia Dickson, who said the students had “worked really hard” but valued the opportunity to do something positive.

“We based all of our assessments around the food fight and it’s been a really great experience to organise an event by ourselves,” she said.

“It was a great experience to do it.

“It’s great to raise funds because we have a lot of kids here who attend the breakfast club and get food in the mornings, so it’s great to be able to give back to the people who give to us.”

Terang College teacher Matthew Murray said the students had displayed a diverse range of skills in planning the food fight.

“Our personal development skills class is centred around emotional intelligence and personal identity, so they had to choose strategies on how they were going to deal with situations with might come up – be that around resilience, management, planning and organising,” he said.

“This was the perfect opportunity for them to showcase all of those skills.

“From a teacher’s perspective, to see them finish this project the way they did, we could not be prouder of them.”