The 4Good programme can be run through schools and community groups. Here are some examples of what young people in New Zealand have been doing to make the world a better place:

Greenacres Primary School, Wellington: Books for the Philippines

In 2010, our teacher Howard Young was hosted by some schools in the Philippines. On his return, he shared his experiences with our class and we decided to thank the schools in the Philippines for hosting our teacher by sending them library books.

The Year 2 and 3 students worked together. We collected books and sorted them out so that we could send only the good ones. We organised an ice cream fundraiser supported by our parents and the school. It was fun. We raised enough money to ship 108 books to the Philippines. Our group wrote letters, made bookmarks and a DVD to add to the packages.

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Bishop Viard College, Porirua, Wellington: Two changed rooms

At Bishop Viard we decided to the two changing rooms for visiting sports team were chosen to create art with an anti-graffiti focus. We reasoned that this would show past taggers what could be done with their talent in a positive way! It was a team effort with Trevor Mason, the Graffiti Management Coordinator partnershing with us to get the job done.

Eight very large panels – paint, paint and more paint! Heavily discounted by P&Z Decorating/Resene Paints. Then came the hard part – weeks of drawing, designing, redesigning, painting and touch-up. The themes of sport, culture and our religion were explored in our designs.

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Scots College, Wellington: Emergency preparedness

Our group started up as an effort to raise money for the people of Chile after the earthquake at the start of the year and as we had a partner school over in Chile, it seemed only a natural. Of course, fundraising isn’t as easy as you would expect and it required us to give up our own time during events like the Wellington Dragon Boating competition. But the effort was well worth it as we fundrased over $2000 by the end of it.

It was not all smooth sailing. One of the most frustrating experiences was the sponsorship deal we got. Basically, it was that we would get 10 cents for every bottle of Anchor milk sold in either New World in Miramar or Pak ‘n’ Save in Kilbernie. Sure, it seemed like a great deal at the time but despite a whole month of advertising for our cause and collection of receipts, we didn’t even make $10 out of it. Fortunately, Anchor was gracious enough to add their donation.

Read more about Scots College