Trafalgar High School Vocational Major students recently ran community engagement projects across the school ranging from mental health awareness barbecue to collecting food for local community group Bettermental.
The year 12 students were exploring their unit four focus on community programs and applying their communication and project management skills to deliver a community project.
The projects ran for various amounts of time, with the non-perishable food collection running for a week led by three year 12 students.
Stevie Fiddler who was part of the team said "we choose the project knowing lots of people had spare food that doesn't get used and could take advantage to donate it to Bettermental who in turn passes it onto families accessing their services in Trafalgar."
"It feels like there are more people needing help with food than before, so it was an important area to support," Stevie said.
Sofia Jamieson approached the community project in a different way, setting up a lunchtime activity where students and staff who participated in a mindfulness activity, were rewarded with a free cupcake.
Sofia said "food was quite a strong motivator for people to consider doing a mindfulness activity and engaged people with it who would normally ignore mindfulness."
The stalls were shared on the school's social media and received a lot of attention.
Isaac Caroleo said after the photos of his goal kicking competition with Trafalgar football merchandise as prizes were seen by teammates, he earned a fine at training.
Principal Brett Pedlow congratulated the students on the range of projects chosen.
"From mental health to the local environment, mindfulness for our own community or awareness of nation-wide mental health awareness like R U Okay day. The students put a lot of effort, and their skill s developed not just over the vocational major program of their VCE, but from seven years at secondary education, towards these causes and projects.
"As youth led activities, they were able to gain engagement from all year levels of the school and not only showcase their community causes, but the curriculum of the vocational major, a relatively new offering in the VCE, replacing the former VCAL qualification," Mr Pedlow said.