Teacher Heidi Littlejohn with some of the youngsters involved in setting up the sharing shed. They are, from left, Georgina Lowe, Sean Boss, Lucas Albuquerque Stiaque, Gus Eisen and Dylan Hubbard.
Thieves have jimmied open a cash box fixed to St Peter’s Catholic School’s sharing shed to steal the money inside.
“It’s a real downer for us all,” said the school’s Room 4 teacher, Heidi Littlejohn. “We feel gutted that someone would go to the effort of doing that, particularly as the shed is there to help the wider community.”
Making the experience even more senseless is that the thieves made off with about $10 – putting a new cash box in place will likely cost upwards of $50.
The theft goes against every tenet the children live by at St Peter’s. They espouse kindness, sharing and empathy for others and have been asking questions about why people do such things.
Heidi’s builder husband Blair Littlejohn built the shed for the school late last year, complete with shelves, roller wheels and a bolted-in money box. The school decided to have one as a natural extension of its vegetable-growing project started earlier in 2022.
The boxed vegetable beds and outside kitchen space have produced well since they were set up at the end of term one last year. Teacher Liz Sudfeldt said the youngsters research what vegetables grow at what time of year, then plant them up, look after them and then reap their crops.
Vegetables grown on site are often supplemented by donations of excess produce from school families. It all goes towards building up the school’s output, which in turn goes towards an in-school meals project that helps local families in need.
Much of the produce is sold in the sharing shed which is placed on the roadside to be in easy reach of people walking by. The funds generated go towards keeping the cycle going.
“While we’re feeling devastated about the theft, we will keep going,” said Heidi. “We’ll just get it fixed and start again.”
