WelCom December 2024/January 2025
This article is by the Year 13 students of St Catherine’s College who initiated support of their Board of Trustees for the Living Wage Schools Campaign.
The living wage recognises all people deserve a fair wage for their labour, offering a way to lift people out of poverty. This is why, for our social action assessment in Sociology in our last year at school, we approached our Principal and Board of Trustees to support the Living Wage Schools Campaign.
This campaign aims to ensure all school cleaners, caretakers, canteen staff and grounds keepers are paid a living wage, by calling on the Government to provide new funding to schools.
We talked to Finn Cordwell, the Community Organiser in Wellington for the movement, who gave us lots of ideas on how to move our social action forward. Gaining the support of our Principal, Ms Amelie Kelder, gave us confidence to present our proposal at the October BoT meeting where Board Members were very responsive and agreed to sign the pledge recognising, as a Mercy School, paying the living wage is essential.
We feel proud St Catherine’s is the first Catholic school in Wellington to sign up, and we were the first student-led campaign in Aotearoa New Zealand to support the campaign. We have learned young people can make a positive change in our communities if they are brave enough to take a chance and stand up for what is right.
