Social Awareness

ALIVE   ‘justice for all’

All students from 1st to 6th year are welcome to join ALIVE which meets once a week at lunchtime.

Sion Hill’s Developing World Group has three aims:

1. To educate ourselves and others about the Developing World
2. To campaign for a more just distribution of the world’s resources
3. To fundraise in support of the needs in the Developing World

Educating and campaigning are part of the same process. Since ALIVE was founded in 1996 its members have campaigned on many fronts. ALIVE members have campaigned on behalf of refugees, to end Third World debt, against slavery, for fair trade between the Developed and Developing World. 

The Fairtrade campaign is an ongoing one over the years. ALIVE promotes Fairtrade goods at events such as parent-teacher meetings and in our staff room. 

As a result of its fundraising ALIVE has sent thousands of pounds/euro to development projects in the Developing World. Its funds have gone to projects for street children in Brazil, for a women’s group establishing home industries in Rwanda, to Bóthar , to Concern, to Trocaire, to Aidlink, to Action Aid, to Sightsavers and the Loreto Sealdah School in Kolkata, to victims of natural disasters and for children who needed basic literacy education, 

The now annual much anticipated Coin Race first took place in 2001 when ALIVE organised a Coin Race for the school prior to the change over to the Euro currency. Classes compete to see which class can lay the most lines of copper coins. Most recently the money raised went to street children in Kolkata and to buy a dairy cow for a family through Bóthar.

The student members of ALIVE take various roles in the running of the meeting and thinking up fundraising methods which are always imaginative and varied. We welcome guest speakers to address the group on relevant issues.