Celebrating Refugee Week
The way forward
REFUGEE WEEK is an incredible opportunity for the whole school to celebrate the contribution refugees make to our society, while raising awareness, remembering, and honouring the often perilous journey that refugees have taken to reach Australia. This year, we celebrated Refugee Week from Sunday, 20 June to Saturday, 26 June 2021. The 2021 theme for Refugee Week is Unity - The way forward.
Celebrating Refugee Week at Cecil is an annual occasion to highlight aspects of the refugee experience and help the broader Cecil community to understand what it is like to be a refugee. We started Refugee Week, with all Connect students viewing the powerful
PowerPoint presentation put together by Moayad Sabbagh, a Year 11 refugee from Syria. In this presentation, Moayad presented the death-defying journeys and numerous settlement challenges taken by refugees who have come from afar to live and study with us at Cecil Hills High School. This was followed by discussions about the issues affecting refugees and the positive impacts that refugees have made on our Australian society.
Additionally, to officially launch Refugee Week 2021, and to celebrate the 2021 theme of Unity at Cecil, we hosted a 2021 Refugee Week Lunch on Monday 21 June 2021 from 1.00 pm to 2.00 pm in the Common Room for our staff, our refugees, and their parents. With over 60 people attending, it was a huge challenge and effort, not just by us but by a team of staff and students. Getting families, staff, and students together, sharing a meal, and sharing stories truly helped, not only to build empathy and understanding of refugee experiences and the Cecil community but also helped us to connect as fellow human beings.
In our own STARS Connect class, we continually identify and implement strategies that improve the achievement, engagement, and wellbeing outcomes for our students from refugee backgrounds. During Refugee Week, STARS students were provided breakfast, a bilingual dictionary to support their language acquisition, and read stories of the perilous journey of refugees showcasing their amazing resilience, creativity and ingeniousness of people of refugee background.
Let us continue to build a Stronger, Safer, Healthier, Happier, Together Cecil Community.
Mrs Marilyn Rattos and Mrs Hong Pham
Refugee Transition Coordinators