HELPING to educate those less fortunate overseas is how two groups of year 12 students in the south-west are celebrating the end of their exams.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
One group of 16 teenagers left on Friday for the Philippines and a second group, which includes students from Emmanuel and King’s colleges, left on Sunday for East Timor.
The 2015 Alternative to Schoolies will undertake two projects in the next 23 days in the Philippines.
The program is the work of Moyne Shire youth development officer Geraldine Edar-Ralph who will accompany the students on the trip.
While there, they will teach students and renovate classrooms at a school in Indangan in the Buhangine District which earlier south-west groups built. They will also work on the early stages of a boarding school and orphanage.
Warrnambool College’s Zoe Van Duynhoven, 17, said she was looking forward to experiencing a different culture.
“It's not like we're doing the touristy thing, we're in the heart of it,” she said.
Brauer College’s Jack Conlan, 17, was excited about his first overseas trip where he will teach AFL and help lay the foundations for the orphanage. “(I wanted to do it) to get out of Australia and be able to help someone who's doing it a lot harder than we do,” he said.
Nine Emmanuel College students and one from King’s College were due to arrive in East Timor on Sunday afternoon for their 10-day trip.
They will first visit Dili’s historical sites before helping students practice their English at a school on Atauro Island.
Emmanuel College 2015 school caption Hamish Rayner, 18, said about 50 per cent of East Timor’s population was aged under 18. “It’s a really young population so there’s a huge emphasis on education,” he said
It was not the first time that Hamish has spent time helping others overseas.
This time last year he spent a month in Borneo with World Challenge to help protect a village church against flood damage.