“It is in giving that we receive” Saint Francis of Assissi
This year, for the first time in our history, the school has created a new initiative for sixth year pupils The Dominican Award. Twenty -four of our current Lower Sixth pupils have agreed to take part in the first cohort of Dominican pupils.
The Dominican Award is a Social Justice award which was established in our school this year. It is a voluntary award which encourages the participates to take part in charity work, social justice events and faith -based activities both in school and in our local communities.
The award is open to all year 13 pupils, it runs over 16 months, in which time pupils must complete 20 activities at part of school life, 10 activities within their own individual communities plus a reflective concluding presentation which then will be looked over by the board of governors and senior staff in order to be presented with their gold medal at the end of the process in recognition of their achievements.
At today’s assembly Mr Lynch, Dominican Principal, spoke of his great pride and pleasure in being able to introduce our Dominican Award students to the school. He told members of both the junior and senior school that these pupils embody all that is best about Dominican College Portstewart and how they show the importance for pupils to develop all of their potential. Mr Lynch presented the pupils with their Dominican Award badges and urged younger pupils to aspire to follow in their example when they reached the senior school.
Tommy Molyneaux, one of the pupils currently involved in The Dominican Award explained – “Our mission as Dominican award participants is to search for truth and justice as this is the core of our ethos. Our award encourages us to strive for a more just and peaceful society. We want to enhance our spiritual, physical, emotional and social development through participation is school and community activities. We hope to feel a personal sense of achievement from taking part in the award and show commitment to a task or goal.’
Emma Park explained her motivation for seeking to be involved in working towards the Dominican Award: “One reason we joined the Dominican Award is because we want to give back to society, we want to be involved in helping both inside and outside of school and the Dominican Award gives us the platform and opportunity to do this. It allows us as sixth formers to set an example and be role models to younger year groups by showing that we are willing to give up our own time and volunteer to help others who need extra support. We want to do our part for social justice issues such as poverty, inequality and discrimination. We strive to be our generations advocates for social justice and put our thoughts and words into action by doing something about it.”
Another of this year’s participants, Keeva Campbell added: “Since I have joined the Dominican Award in October, I have been able to get involved in a multitude of social justice activities. As a group, we have introduced and continue to run our in-school period poverty scheme. Furthermore, each member of the award helped to co-ordinate and run our annual Dominican Save The Children Christmas Jumper Day. We also continued to support our local SVP conference and our members took a lead role in overseeing the SVP Christmas and Trocaire Appeal in the lead up to Christmas. The money that was raised from each of these social justice events helped families and specifically children living in poverty. We also have planned to support further social justice initiatives in the upcoming months such as participating in the Darkness into Light Walk, Harley is going to abseil off Fair head in aid of NI Air Ambulance and we also have a relay team who will participate in the Belfast Marathon.
As part of the school’s core ethos is the principle of service, and as Dominican Award ambassadors, participating pupils acknowledge the key role that they can play in serving their school community. Many of our Dominican Award ambassadors have already volunteered to help at our school’s production of “High School Musical” taking on roles as part of the backstage crew or as part of the hair and makeup team. Furthermore, as part of the award, some participants have approached a range of subject teachers to offer their assistance in class and after school settings. There are currently members of the Dominican Award team assisting with Year 8 Math classes or helping our students at our bi- weekly after school homework club and it is hoped that we will develop and extend this over the coming months.
Recently, the Dominican Award has just introduced a whole school recycling initiative which they hope to introduce more fully to the whole school community during an assembly in the very near future.
Alice Stanton, another of this year’s inaugural participants explained, “When committing to become members of the Dominican Award, we were also made aware of the importance of reaching out to our local community. Just before Christmas, some of our members took part in fundraising activities for St Column’s local primary school. In addition to this, we also donated food hampers and essential toiletries to our local care home, Madelayne Court. Many of our award participants also help with the local Flame club, which is a weekly youth club for the local children. We are also in the process of planning links with the National Trust and we also have participants signing up to complete some essential summer voluntary work at the Habitat for Humanity Restore in Ballymena.”
Concluding a presentation to staff and pupils at today’s assembly Stefan Bertucelli also explained the faith-based activities that the group of Dominican Award students will be involved in, “In signing up to the award, we as participants acknowledge the importance of getting involved in all aspects of school life, and a key aspect of our school life is our practice of faith. To date, we have been able to volunteer our time and skills at our school services by offering to participate in readings, or by leading church collections and also through our involvement as members of our school choir. As Dominican Award participants, we feel that it is important to set an example for our younger student population of the importance of gathering together as a school community to mark key liturgical events in reverence.”
Best wishes to all our Dominican Award pupils.
