Refugee Week

Refugee Week in 2022 encouraged organisations and individuals to focus on healing together and emerging as a more fulfilled and connected society. Refugee Week is Australia’s peak annual activity to promote greater awareness of refugees, the issues they face and the contributions refugees are making to the Australian community. The aims of Refugee Week are:

To celebrate the ways in which people from refugee backgrounds enrich our communities and culture
To educate the public who refugees are and why they have come to Australia, and to understand the many challenges they face in doing so
To foster empathy and understanding and in doing so, encourage a safe and welcoming environment for people seeking safety in Australia
To enable communities and individuals to take positive action, and stand in solidarity with people seeking asylum and displaced people in Australia and around the world.

At Cranbourne Secondary College, we value safe, respectful, and responsible behaviour. Our Student Wellbeing Committee decided that they wanted to celebrate Refugee Week and felt that this was important to our school community. Students in our Wellbeing Committee came together with our MultiPride and Student Representative Council who undertook a number of activities to raise awareness about this important time of the year.

Our College put up posters around the school to raise awareness of Refugee Week and organised a guest speaker, Maya Ghassali, to talk to interested students and staff. Maya is a passionate, ambitious young leader in the Australian community. After fleeing war-torn Syria with nothing but suitcases of clothes in 2012, she completed the Victorian Certificate of Education and received an ATAR of 90+, securing a place in the very first cohort of the Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at Monash University. Maya currently works as a Lead Facilitator at the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria, the peak body for young people in the state. She delivers workshops to young people and trains them in Advocacy, Media, and Youth Participation, empowering young people to take a stand on what they believe in and represent their community. We would like to extend our gratitude to Maya for taking the time to come to our College – the students and staff present found her talk captivating and informative.

The students decided that they would like to create a fundraiser for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC https://asrc.org.au/). ASRC was founded in 2001 and is Australia’s largest human rights organisation providing support to people seeking asylum. They are an independent not-for-profit organisation whose programs support and empower people seeking asylum to maximise their own physical, mental and social wellbeing. The College staff donated items for a raffle and we had a generous donation from the Moonlit Sanctuary, who gave the College a family pass valued at $70. We also created a “guess the lollies in the jar” competition and had a bake sale – a HUGE thank you to Ms Carr and students for their support in baking 150 cupcakes!

Our students spent a number of their lunch breaks, recess breaks, and time before school selling raffle tickets, attending to the bake sale, and helping to facilitate the guess the “lollies in the jar” competition. Winners were announced on the last day of the term during the Colour Explosion Festival.

In total, our College raised a massive $712.20 for our ASRC fundraiser.

The Wellbeing Committee would like to extend our gratitude to students, staff, and all members of the community who helped to make this fundraiser a success. A special thanks to Sarah Carr, Anke Maclean, Katharine Seyler, George Massouris, and the members of the Wellbeing Team. We would also like to extend our thanks to the student members of the Wellbeing Committee, MultiPride, and the Student Representative Council – we will be holding a morning tea next term to thank you for all of your help.

Finally, as the focus of Refugee Week is Healing, we would like to reiterate their message:

We’re happy you’re safe

We’re happy you’re free

We’re happy you’re here

One VCE