Dear Parents, Carers, Staff and Students,

This Wednesday 5 June is World Environment Day. World Environment Day is the United Nations Day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment. Since it began in 1974, the event has grown to become a global platform for public outreach that is widely celebrated in over 100 countries. Each World Environment Day is organised around a theme that draws attention to a particularly pressing environmental concern. The theme for 2019 is “Air pollution”.

As a school community we will come together on Wednesday to celebrate this important event with a liturgy commencing at 10:00am in the hall. I warmly encourage parents and carers to attend our liturgy. The students will also be focusing on activities in the classroom that raise their awareness and understanding about the role we all play in caring for our environment.

Over the last twelve months the staff have participated in a number of professional development initiatives that have centred on the environment. Our staff spiritual formation day last Term centred around Laudato Si, the holy writings of Pope Francis on how we, as stewards of our Mother Earth care for our environment. This year the staff, led by our environmental committee are working with Beth Riolo from the Catholic Education Office to develop a strategic plan that supports our environmental initiatives at St Anthony’s. In the weeks to come we will be using the newsletter to share some of these important initiatives.

The other important initiative that will occur this Wednesday is ‘Bring A Smile To School’ Day. The theme for this Wednesday is to ‘wear something blue’, or reluctantly I have agreed to something Maroon, due to the importance of this day. (If you are unaware of the importance of Wednesday besides it being World Environment Day, please stop me in the playground and I will enlighten you!) The purpose of this day is for students, staff and parents to simply have some fun. Schools need to be a place of happiness and laughter and hopefully on Wednesday in some small way, we can be reminded of this.

Take Care

Mr Justin Devlin

Principal