With the end of the 2025 school year fast approaching here in Australia, many students and parents will be turning their minds to how to show appreciation to the educators who’ve made a difference to them. From candles and soaps, to mugs and homemade baked goods – each year educators are swamped with heartfelt gestures of appreciation.
When Andrea McKellar, a grade 6 teacher at Holy Spirit Community School in Victoria, saw how many lovely gifts she received each year (and the amount of money that parents collectively spent) she started to think if there was an alternative, and had an idea.
‘I'm extremely lucky in my life that I have everything that I need and everything I want,’ McKellar tells Teacher. ‘So, these families saying thank you with a gift – as much as I love the sentiment, I don't need a candle, and I don't need a mug. But I know within the world and within our community, there are lots of people who need things.’
In 2019, McKellar was listening to a radio segment featuring local businessman Mark Balla who was sharing a story about a trip he made to India, where he found that many schools had no toilets. From there, she met with Balla at a coffee shop and heard all about his efforts to get more girls to school in India via his not-for-profit called Operation Toilets.
This inspired McKellar to put her own idea into action. She started Teacher Presence – a not-for-profit organisation that redirects money that would otherwise be used for optional educator gifts for occasions like the end of the school year, or certain educator celebrations (World Teacher’s Day, Early Educators Day, staff birthdays) to charities aligned with their mission.
Their mission is to create a community of educators that spread the importance of kindness, empathy and gratitude through the gift of giving.
‘So rather than me getting $450 worth of candles and gifts, that money now goes to help build toilets in India and those girls can have the opportunity to go to school,’ McKellar shares.
Educators choose to join Teacher Presence if it resonates with them. Everyone working on Teacher Presence volunteers their time, as 100% of all donations go directly to the teacher’s nominated charity.
The 3 partner charities
The 3 charities that Teacher Presence partners with are:
Operation Toilets: This charity builds toilets and delivers hygiene education programs in schools and in communities in developing countries with the special aim of improving the educational opportunities for adolescent girls and to improve the lives of needy families in rural areas.
Berry Street: This Victorian charity helps children who are experiencing violence, abuse and neglect, supporting them to recover from trauma. Each year, Berry Street works with 35,000 children, young people and families by providing therapeutic support, safe homes and trauma-informed education that enables children and young people to stay connected with school and community.
Eat Up: Eat Up provides free lunches to students on a national scale. To date, they have provided over 4 million lunches to Australian kids. With the help of partners and dedicated volunteers, each week, Eat Up makes and delivers over 30,000 lunches directly to schools for vulnerable children.
How it all works
McKellar enlisted the help of her nephew to work on the graphic design and her niece to support her marketing efforts. During COVID, they built the website and honed their mission and values. By 2023, McKellar says they began to approach educators to get involved.
To get involved, a teacher visits the website and reads about the 3 charities before choosing which one they’d like to align with. They then sign up to the Teacher Presence community and upload their photo. From there, the educator spreads the word to their students and school community – and there are a range of free resources to help schools and teachers to do this.
Parents and families are still able to leave thoughtful messages of gratitude for their educators, all via the website. ‘When you go into the website and you go into the payment system, you can write a message there to your teacher. On our resources page we've also got a little template there. So, some kids print that out and write on it and then give that as well,’ McKellar adds.
The impact so far
The charities provide feedback on the impact of Teacher Presence donations. For example, there is a toilet block in India that has ‘Teacher Presence’ named on it.
‘It's just really so heartwarming,’ McKellar says. ‘There are videos of girls saying, “I'm going to be a doctor”, “I'm going to be a teacher.” And they just didn't have that opportunity before… how amazing is it that these girls go to school and fulfil their dreams?’
The feedback from teachers has also been very powerful.
As a teacher, I hope to inspire a strong sense of social justice and the belief that small actions can make a difference. By signing up to Teacher Presence, I empowered the families to make a meaningful contribution to a fantastic cause (Berry St). Instead of coming home with a car full of chocolate, alcohol, candles and trinkets, I knew that something worthwhile had been achieved. … I really liked the wording of the letter [to the community], to emphasise that presents aren't expected, donations aren't required and we are simply offering a way for families to make a difference and work towards a socially just world.
[It’s] an excellent initiative for teachers to encourage their students to actively contribute to life-changing causes. As much as I love and appreciate gifts at Christmas time, I would far prefer to instil in my students a desire to help others less fortunate than ourselves. I am looking forward to the growth of this project and seeing the far-reaching results this opportunity brings.
McKellar also shares some of the feedback she’s received from parents.
Being able to show gratitude towards a teacher by making a donation that in turn supports important charities is so heartwarming and rewarding. Knowing your child has also been involved in this makes it even more worthwhile, because it teaches that gifts can come in many different forms, and can often have a greater meaning when there is a story attached. An amazing and powerful initiative. So lucky to have contributed.
[It’s] a ‘win-win-win’. Firstly, it provides a great way to thank teachers for the wonderful impact they have on our children, secondly your donation goes to support fantastic charities doing wonderful work in our community and thirdly, we can teach our children about the importance of ‘paying it forward’.
For McKellar, she hopes to continue to model gratitude, empathy and kindness to her students through the work she does at Teacher Presence.
‘Teacher Presence allows me as an educator to clearly model kindness, gratitude and empathy. It gives me an opportunity to teach my students how lucky we are in our community and to allow them to understand that not everyone is as lucky as us,’ McKellar says.
‘Through Teacher Presence, the students and their families can also show this kindness, gratitude and empathy by giving a gift that makes a difference.’
You can find out more about Teacher Presence on its website.
