College outreach

from St David's Marist Inanda - 2021 Yearbook

Water polo

Service awards

Half Colours:

• Sanskar Sharma 126 • Matthew Bester 140 • Ross Jackson 163 • Jordan Nunes 164 • Alexander Rohana 171 • Gareth Rohana 171 • Luca Ferreira 185 • Alessandro Baisch 200

Full Colours:

• Christopher Michael 245 • Caleb Grimett 250 • Yaseen Mayet 250 • Neo Phihlela 250 • Rob Schaafsma 251 • Bradley Becker 252 • Kabir Misri 253 • Jacob Walbeck 254 • Demetri Yiallouris 255 • Josh Jacobs 256 • Matthew Stephenson 257.30 • Brian Hudson 258 • Luca Nicholas 261 • Amani Bukanga 266 • Thashael Naidoo 268.15 • Connor Human 274 • Ross Mitchell 280 • Adam Nicholas 285 • Aidan Hope 286 • Nicholas Lutz 295 • Massimo Araujo 300 • Gehan Neuhoff 300 • Matthew Cooper 310 • Matthew Shahim 312 • Gregory Shave 330 • Dominic di Nicola 453 • Adrian Botha 473

“What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.”

When everything falls away and we are left without any trappings of the material world, it will be how we care for and treat each other that will be most important. Can we really be happy, and have peace in our hearts when there are people homeless and hungry, uneducated, and poor, disadvantaged through no fault of their own, but because of a failed system?

Do we have a responsibility as citizens of this country to speak out for those who are silenced, to stand up for those who are marginalised, fight for what is right? It is our duty to educate our boys about the issues of injustice and disparity in this country and allow them to respond with their hearts.

At the heart of our Marist ethos is Service Beyond Our Gates. Our founder, St Marcelin Champagnat, sought no publicity, hours, or awards when he sought his students to be servant leaders like Christ.

The most significant and impactful service in my humble opinion is relational service, where you walk for a while alongside the person that you are serving, letting them feel cared for and worthy. We are all called to service. Many times, we are faced with situations, and we feel compelled to act and we fail to heed the call and later regret it. Some people do respond generously and selflessly with their time, efforts, and gifts.

The past two years have been most difficult and active service became impossible. Organisations could not expose their wards and we needed to protect our boys from Covid-19. A lot was lost, and passive service became the norm. It was not ideal, but organisations appreciated everything because they also experienced financial woes. We tried our best to do what we could with what we had, where we were, to help people who were in need.

I urge all boys to drive their own service, to see the need and to respond fervently to make this world a better place. As adults it is our duty to show our boys, by example, how to be servant leaders, and allow them to do their own service, remind them that service is not for self-gain. Service is not about colours, awards or an honours blazer. We must allow them to solve their own problems that they might encounter with the system and teach them accountability.

Our young men are building a man, and what they put in is what they will get out. Resilience, work ethic, integrity, collaboration are 21st-century skills that will stand them in great stead in their future.

“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.” – Nelson Mandela

This is the man we would like to send out into the world.

Mrs V Ellis

Outreach Coordinator

Eco-Brick Collections and Building in 2021

On 17 April, during the holiday, some of our Grade 12 boys volunteered their time to be involved with a

community centre eco-brick build project in Diepsloot. These boys were excellent ambassadors for the school and demonstrated servant leadership in their involvement in the project. The boys ended up spending the day either filling Coke bottles with sand (and ensuring that the bottles weighed 6kg) or stuffing donated eco-bricks with waste so that they were fully compact and weighed over 500g. The quality of their work was acknowledged and appreciated by the organisers. The boys also got to see a classroom that was already built with eco-bricks and got to work with the community of Diepsloot and various other volunteers. I am hoping that we will continue contributing to the building of this community centre. This year the boys have contributed a total of 580 Eco-bricks.

Below is the insight from a Grade 12 learner, Jordan Nunes, who attended the eco-brick build project and has also contributed 120 eco-bricks this year.

“I can still remember the day Mr Marangoni proposed the eco-brick initiative to the school in a formal assembly – before Covid times. He demonstrated that the project is fairly simple: create a compact bottle of non-recyclable plastic to reduce pollution and create something instead.

“More than two years later and I got to experience the full vision of his words. On arrival at the building site, I was met with a classroom built entirely out of eco-bricks, around 16 000 I was told. Adjacent to the beige coloured building, were two mountains of plastic bottles packed and ready for the construction of yet another classroom. Their summits were around 3m off the ground and adding my additional bricks felt rather insignificant, like throwing sand on to a beach actually.

“The project allowed us to interact with many people with a common vision: residents from the surrounding Diepsloot community, children that were no older than eight years old, work colleagues doing some out-of-office bonding and plenty of motivated citizens enjoying their time making a difference. The day was spent manufacturing even more bricks and everyone was split into a group of five. At one point, an unofficial competition began between all the groups to see who could fill and make the most amount of eco-bricks. This seemed exciting until everyone realised that it took you over an hour to fill one, properly! This full hour was muscle-tearing work and only getting harder the longer you went on. By the end, my group had only made a collective 13 bricks – quite a long way off the 16 000.

“The effort is worth the result. Mine and other people’s service to this initiative is only a fraction of the work that needs to be done but eventually it will all lead up to become a whole. I can truthfully say that on that day I received the accomplishment of helping this community and gaining a stronger right arm.”