Service-orientated student one of a record 349 to march
Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia
Karli Borresen wants to take your money . . . for a really good cause.
Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Business graduand Karli Borresen served in Vanuatu this year with student club One Mission.
Credit: Chelsea Mitchell.
The Avondale College of Higher Education graduate, one of a record 349 eligible to march during yearend services, December 6-8, supported a few of these causes as a major in international poverty and development studies and in marketing.
The recipient of the Professional Advantage Bachelor of Business Prize served as secretary–treasurer of student mission club COSMOS, which donated $20,000 to Tonea School in India this year and in 2011. She completed a six-month placement with International Children’s Care Australia helping coordinate its Big Build in Thailand. And she and other students helped implement a clean water project on Atchin Island in Vanuatu as part of a One Mission trip.
The experience has given Karli a better understanding of how to get others to support similar causes. “Marketing connects a donor to a project,” she says. “It’s the bridge between two worlds.”
Karli’s classmates recognised the importance of service in the giving of the graduation class gift, which co-president Kaden Pepper announced during the consecration service on the Lake Macquarie campus.
The class placed 23 black granite pavers in the path surrounding the circular garden adjacent to College Hall on the Lake Macquarie campus. Each paver lists the trips Ministry of Teaching Overseas (MOTO), One Mission and STORM Co have made in each of the years since their formation at Avondale. Attached to the lamp post in the middle of the garden are signs pointing to a city from six of the world’s continents, New Zealand and the Pacific islands. An accompanying plaque includes the college’s motto, “For a greater vision of world needs.”
The gift will be “a reminder that service is foundational to the Avondale experience,” says class staff adviser Jason Hinze, who founded MOTO in his role as the School of Education’s secondary course convenor.
The class also donated $5000 to One Mission as a more tangible example of its Matthew 5:13-16-based “Salt” theme.
About 20 per cent of the class are former Diploma of General Studies students, only about half of who enrolled at Avondale with a Year 12 rank. The course “gives good students who were not adequately identified in Year 12 an opportunity to further their education,” says convenor David Potter.
One of the course options available to them is to complete a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Business in four years. The two degrees “take advantage of common units,” says head of the School of Humanities and Creative Arts Tony Martin. The employability of those completing the degrees may increase because “they’ll bring with them a whole raft of cross-discipline expertise.”