By Marcus Uhe
From 14,000 kilometres away on the other side of the world, a primary school in Lynbrook is doing all that it can to support those caught in Ukraine crisis.
The community at St Francis de Sales Primary School have thrown its support behind Ukrainians through a student-led bake sale.
For the past two weeks, grade five students Mia Figurek, Zoe Nguyen and music teacher Kristy Galea have been selling home-made cookies before school, with funds to go to the Ukraine Crisis Appeal, a collaboration between the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO), Rotary Australia World Community Service (RAWCS) and Caritas Ukraine – the largest Australian tax-deductible fundraising effort for Ukraine.
Mia’s family has Ukrainian heritage and she attends Ukrainian school at the Ukrainian Community Hall in Noble Park, while Ms Galea also has a personal connection to the country through her sister’s fiancé.
“I was on car park duty and I knew that Mia is Ukrainian, and I asked her ‘what are we doing for Ukraine?’” Ms Galea said.
“She thought about it and I gave her the suggestion of making some blue and yellow ribbons for fundraising and she came back to me and said, ‘I’d really like to do a bake sale.’”
On day one of the sale, they sold one batch of approximately 24 cookies in just two minutes.
The next day, they made a double batch, but it still wasn’t enough to cater for the hungry cohort.
“There were kids walking off crying, so we had to reassess at the end of it,” Ms Galea recalled.
“Before we knew it I was making about 80 cookies a day and they (Mia and her younger sister Larisa) were making 40 each.
“Zoe came in the day after, one of (Mia) best mates.
“She got on board without asking and I just stood back, watched them and let them run it.”
To keep up with demand, the trio began receiving donations of ingredients from the school community for their iced sugar cookies, loaded cookies, cupcakes and more.
Mia’s after school routine involves making, rolling and cutting the cookie dough, baking the cookies and icing them in blue or yellow icing, the colours of the Ukrainian flag.
In the morning, she would be up at six to individually bag them in time for the sale to kick-off at 8.30am before school starts, where her classmates would be eagerly awaiting with gold coins to purchase a sweet treat.
While she enjoyed having the opportunity to support Ukraine, Mia said that she was looking forward to taking a break, with the stall closing for business on Friday 1 April.
“After these two weeks I feel like I’m going to quit baking because of how tiring it is,” Mia said.
“I felt really happy because people were supporting me.”
At the outset, the girls hoped to raise $1000 through their sales and other contributions from the St Francis community.
By the end of the two weeks, the initiative had smashed their initial target, raising $3100 which will be presented to Stephan Romaniw, Co-Chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations on the last day of term one, Friday 8 April.
Ms Galea said the spirit of the initiative had touched everyone across the school.
“I had a student who came and just dropped a bag of coins and walked off.
“Mia and Zoe said, ‘come and take a cookie,’ but he said no and walked-off.
“I went up to the mum and said, ‘he just dropped a bag of coins but he didn’t take any cookies,’ and the next day he brought two bags of coins and didn’t take anything.
“You see these kids and you see a bright future.”
St Francis de Sales principal Christine White was immensely proud of the students.
“It’s what you hope might happen, but when you see it, it says something about the children,” Ms White said.
