St Hilda's College Q3 Newsletter

HILDA'S NEWS Q3 2023

Where has the year gone?

It doesn't seem that long since we were waiting with excitement to welcome our newest intake of students back in February Six months on and that group of new students are now well and truly Hildarians We have even welcomed a number of Semester 2 starters after having farewelled those students who have headed off on their various overseas exchange adventures!

Our Principal, James has now settled into his new role and our Dean of Students, Fe and her family have firmly established themselves as members of the Hilda's community

We've had quite a lot of events and achievements over the past few months so enjoy this quarterly update on such things as Annual Appeal, 60th Anniversary preparations, sporting achievements, Paddock to Plate and more.

Annual Appeal 2023

Our campaign for this year's Annual Appeal focused on the message that Communitas should be for everyone

Thanks to your generosity, that goal is one step closer!

So far this year, you have raised almost half a million dollars!

As our applications for 2024 begin to ramp up, your support for our scholarship program means that we can be confident in saying that we will be able to offer tangible financial assistance to a significant number of students in 2024 and beyond who otherwise would not be able to afford a college experience

A huge thank you to all of you who donated to this year's Annual Appeal. All donations, small or large help us to help the next generation of Hildarians

A final thank you as well to the three students who shared their stories for this year's Appeal. Harriet, Jacinta and Pearl show just three examples of the early impact that a scholarship has on the life of a young person and we are incredibly grateful that they were willing to provide a glimpse into their lives

We also know that across our community we have a number of alumni who can speak to the impact of a scholarship 5, 10, 20, even 40 years down the track. If you are one of these people and want to share your story, please reach out to our Community Engagement team as we would love to hear from you

60th Anniversary Preparations

As we move closer to our 60th Anniversary, work is well underway on two heavily intertwined projects: our 60th anniversary history book and the gradual digitisation of our archive

We have been incredibly grateful to some of our most recent alumni, primarily Ally Hardy (2022), along with guest appearances by Ella Davidson (2018) and Liz Stevens (2018), who have been diligently working their way through our archive material to catalogue and then scan everything from old photos, menus and tutorial reports to student magazines.

This painstaking, and often dusty work, has been invaluable as we move beyond the planning stage of the book into the writing

As we continue this process, we encourage our community members from across the various decades to share any stories, photographs and/or artefacts relating to St Hilda's. We'd also love to hear if there are particular people or events that we may wish to consider featuring either in the book, our online presence or even in our socials (always happy to indulge in some Flashback Fridays!)

If you have something you would like to contribute, please reach out to the Community Engagement Team. If you are planning to send any items in, we please ask that wherever possible you label the item with the relevant year, names, etc

We can't wait to share these projects with you all

Please pass the message along!

While we are starting to reconnect with missing alumni, we are still missing the contact details for a number of our St Hilda's alumni over the decades and as we build the digital archive and work on the book we would love as many people as possible to be able to share the memories

If you have contact details for people from your peer year who you think may have become disconnected from the College, please feel free to connect them with the Community Engagement Team via our email (communitas@hildas unimelb edu au) or simply encourage them to visit our website and update their details via the form that we have included under the Towards 60 page.

We won't go so far as to send everyone a copy of our missing alumni list, but we certainly appreciate the crowdsourcing effort that appears to have been the approach of choice in 1990!

Paddock to Plate

July 22nd and 23rd saw us welcome current families to the College for our family weekend, the highlight of which was our annual Paddock to Plate event

This event saw the Community Engagement Team join forces with the Student Club to raise money for Farm My School, a social enterprise based on the Bellarine Peninsula

The night was a huge success, with tickets sold out weeks before the event and around $10k raised for Farm My School. Thanks again to Matt Bowles for his auctioneering!

You can visit our website to see the night's program, including information about all the wonderful businesses and individuals who donated items or experiences, as well as those who were involved in providing produce for the event

Congratulations to all involved in the event and a big thank you to all the families who joined us for the night We hope you had as much fun attending as we did in hosting

For all the photos from the event, head over to our Flickr album to see what our wonderful photographers, Fran and Kit from Organic Photography captured!

2023 COLLEGE CALENDAR

The 2023 College Calendar is now available for viewing on our website. While most of the calendar is focused on our current student cohort, some key dates that might interest our community include:

Walk for a Week

Sunday 13th to Sunday 20th August

Support the Hilda's team to support the McGrath Foundation https://fundraise mcgrathfoundation com au/fundraisers/sthildascoll ege/st-hilda--s-college---walk-for-a-week

The University of Melbourne Open Day

Sunday 20th August

Feel free to drop by the College for a tour from 10am to 4pm

Thursday 31st August to Saturday 2nd September

Saturday 16th September

Friday 27th October

St Hilda's College Theatre Group presents, The Addams Family Union House Theatre

See next page for ticket details

Leaders & Gold Leaf Dinner

Celebrating alumni who held student club President and Vicepresident roles, or won prizes including the Communitas & John Harper prize If you are part of this group, you should have received your invitation!

Founders and Benefactors Dinner

Celebrating those who established the College and who donate time or money to ensure the success of St Hilda's

Tea and Tours

Anytime!

Contact us to arrange an individual or small group tour of the College

SEMESTER 2 CO-CURRICULAR UPDATE

While Semester 2 Sports are only a few weeks in at this stage we already have the exciting news that St Hilda's has reclaimed the Netball trophy from Queens College!

A big congratulations to the team, led by this year's captain, Holly Morrison.

Thanks to all those who came to support the team on Grand Final night and for all those who sent their best wishes to the team via our social media channels

Sports and cultural activities will continue throughout Semester 2 and we encourage everyone to share in the excitement via our social media channels

As always, if you have any photos from your own sporting or cultural endeavours whilst at Hilda's please consider sending them through to us at communitas@hildas.unimelb.edu.au