VCAL News

SCOPE

As part of our Personal Develop program this year all Year 12 VCAL students at Mornington Secondary College took part in the SCOPE program, ‘See the Person, Not the Disability.’ Firstly we participated in sessions at school where SCOPE educators taught us strategies to communicate with people with disabilities to prepare us for our community service activities. They gave us an insight into how disabilities can impact people’s day to day lives but essentially if people are treated with respect it can greatly improve their quality of life.

The first community service activity we participated in was assisting with ice skating. We helped people in wheel chairs on and off the ice and kept them company while pushing them around the ice rink. We learnt a lot through this experience, it was challenging to communicate with people who were non verbal but we could see that they all enjoyed the experience and we were proud to be able to help them. We realised that SCOPE’s message to ‘See the Person’ was so important to people’s sense of self.

Balloon football was a competitive eye opener, we pushed competitors in their chairs, acted as goal and boundary umpires and scorers. The players were so competitive and passionate about winning, the large balloon acted as their footy and goals were scored in the usual way. We introduced ourselves to the competitors and got lots of smiles from them, especially if they thought we were good at assisting them to win!

Our final activity was attending the Endeavour Foundation, which is a supported employment warehouse. Our aim of the day was to have conversations with the workers, while assisting them in packaging a range of food products. We found that we had many things in common with the workers, from supporting the same footy teams to listening to the same types of music. This was a great activity, and we were able to have some really good chats whilst working.

Overall, the SCOPE program has been a brilliant eye opener for us Senior VCAL students. We feel more confident in engaging respectfully with people who have disabilities as we enter the workforce next year and have a much greater understanding of the challenges they face in their day to day lives. The aim of the program was to see everybody as individuals, and that their disability makes up one just one aspect of their whole person.

Jasmine Brown, Sophie Colvin and Helen Creswell

VCAL Ambassadors

VCAL Market Day

The VCAL market day is a  fantastic day. it is organised and run by our VCAL Students. Covering the court yard and centre court, stalls providing a range of wares dot the landscape. The market day is growing bigger and better each year. Students from each year level support the event by purchasing food, buying raffle tickets and assisting with the music events.The VCAL market day is a  fantastic day. it is organised and run by our VCAL Students. Covering the court yard and centre court, stalls providing a range of wares dot the landscape. The market day is growing bigger and better each year. Students from each year level support the event by purchasing food, buying raffle tickets and assisting with the music events.