Pink Shirt Day
On Friday the 15th of May the Wellbeing Committee and Service Committee worked together to organise the annual Pink Shirt Day Fundraiser. Pink Shirt Day is an important event that raises awareness for anti-bullying and overall mental health support for New Zealand's Rangatahi. Pink Shirt Day aims to "reduce bullying in Aotearoa by celebrating diversity in all its forms and supporting workplaces, communities and schools to be safe, supportive, welcoming and inclusive of all people". Pink Shirt Day started in Canada in 2007, when two students took a stand against homophobic bullying, after another peer was harassed and threatened for wearing pink. The students brought dozens of pink shirts and distributed them amongst classmates to wear in solidarity. The next day the word got out online and hundreds of students across the globe wore pink to stand against bullying. Pink shirt day has been annually celebrated in Aotearoa since 2009.
In New Zealand, we have the third highest rate of school bullying out of 36 OECD countries, with our rainbow, ethnic and disability communities often being targeted even more. Bullying can have serious and lasting impacts on a person's mental health and their sense of safety at school. Bullying affects a student's ability to learn, academic success, ability to form friendships and feeling like they belong. This highlights the importance of Pink Shirt Day; it makes it so we can continue to build a supportive, inclusive and accepting school culture where there's no tolerance for bullying.
We had events to celebrate Pink Shirt Day such as; a non-uniform day with a gold cold donation, a bakesale, chalk drawing, a photobooth and the official Pink Shirt Day "Design a shirt competition”. Mount Hutt College raised an impressive $968.50 which was donated to the "I am Hope" Mental Health Foundation. The "I am Hope" foundation uses this money to support mental health services and provides schools with free educational anti-bullying resources, to educate students and teachers about the impact of bullying.
For the first time ever we ran the official Pink Shirt Day "Design a Shirt" competition within our school; we saw a lot of cool and creative designs from a variety of year groups. Congrats to our winners; Elsie Dargue (13PT), Issy Marr (13PT), Kate Ferguson-Cooke (11WB), Deepika Kamboj (9TL), Morgan Hastie (7DN), Emma Ferguson-Cooke (7HM) and Tanika Arps (7HM). We also ran a "most pink" competition to encourage participation in Pink Shirt Day. The person in each Manaki who wore the most pink got a Pinky bar.
Overall Pink Shirt Day 2026 was a big success! It was so great to see our school come together to stand against bullying and support one another. We raised $968.50 to go to "I am Hope" which will be put to good use making resources for schools to help prevent bullying and provide mental health support services. Thank you to the members of the Wellbeing and Service committees to help run these events, and for all of those who participated and supported on the day.
