Curtin Volunteers’ (CV!) Sean Simpson will be wearing some unusual bush clobber when he visits the remote WA town of Laverton on 11 December 2009.
‘I personally am really looking forward to dressing up as Santa,’ Sean said.
Sean will be suiting up for CV!’s annual Christmas Wish visit to help deliver presents to 72 lucky children. The Christmas Wish, the highlight of the Laverton program, is now in its 15th year.
‘The kids absolutely love it, they have a great day, and the town loves us to come and do it,’ Sean said.
Sean said the Curtin community always strongly supported the Christmas Wish program.
‘The Curtin Bookshop (on the Bentley campus) lend us a space to have the Christmas tree and basically we just have the tree there with a list of names, ages and sexes on gift-cards attached to the tree and people come and take a card and buy a suitable present,’ Sean said
‘Curtin is fantastic for getting behind this.’
‘We’ve actually had a call from the bookshop this year saying people were asking when the tree was going to go up so they can buy a present.’
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttHuyexRGWc[/youtube]
Sian White, former Laverton program director, talks about the Christmas Wish collection.
The Laverton program sees groups of around six different volunteers fly to the town every second weekend to work with the local community. These trips have forged enduring connections between Curtin and the town.
‘Both the manager of the Laverton-Leonora Cross-Cultural Association and the local Youth Officer are former Curtin Volunteers.’
Sean is confident the program will continue to expand and to make a real difference for both the community and volunteers.
‘Everyone who goes up comes back with an entirely different point of view on life in the bush, on indigenous culture and on Australian culture,’ Sean said.
We had a couple of American interns working this semester and they’ve said to me they gained far more insight into the Australian culture through doing this than through all the other units they had studied.’
The Christmas Wish tree will be at the Curtin Bookshop, located on the Bentley campus, until December 10 2009.
For more information about Curtin Volunteers visit the CV! website.
