St Matthew's Rainbow of Hope

St Matthew's Primary School in Cornubia displayed their true colours for Project Compassion 2010. Through Lent the children worked towards collecting small cut out pictures of people for their Rainbow of Hope. A class received a coloured cut out for every $5 collected.

As well as their weekly collections they had a Rainbow Day where the children came to school in their most colourful clothes. They held a competition for the most colourful class and children. They also sold ice-creams with sprinkles (rainbow of course!). At the end of Rainbow Day each class gave their cut outs to create the school's Rainbow of Hope - made of 800 little colourful cut outs representing a colourful world and a Rainbow of Hope. The rainbow was then used at assembly the and it is now on display in the school library.

The children at St Matthew's have strived hard to "Be More" this year and responded amazingly to raising funds. They nearly doubled previous Project Compassion efforts by raising $4100. St Matthew's embraced the true spirit of Project Compassion and focussed on a lot more than just fundraising. The school put each week's Lenten story on the school intranet. Each story was matched to a colour of the rainbow and the MDGs for the story were underlined. The teachers worked through the stories each week with the children so that they understood how they money was going to add to this rainbow of hope.

Thank you St Matthew's for displaying your true colours in your commitment to helping the poorest of the poor.