MONASH CHAMPIONS

Access Monash Champions

Eight students from Cranbourne Secondary College in Year 10 (and three in Year 9, who completed a separate project) were selected to be a part of Access Monash Champions for 2018. The Access Monash Champions program prepares students to become active community leaders. It provides students with the opportunity to further develop skills to prepare them for leadership roles that they might hold in the future and for life after high school. We were expected to design and deliver a unique project that addresses an issue either in our school or wider community and make a real difference. We had the help of our lovely Monash mentors, Bella, Nick and Alisha, to guide us along the way and to help understand what university is really like. Over the span of a couple of months, we met with our mentors every Friday fortnight to discuss and work on our project. We began by brainstorming ideas and thinking about the issues within our community. After discussing many possible options, the Year 10 group decided that we wanted to help out an organisation that was in need, which was the Australian Animal Protection Society. It is a community-based, not for profit registered charity that aims to return as many animals as possible to their owners or find them new forever homes. Our group split into pairs to inform the school about our upcoming plans by going around to speak to form assembly classes.

To raise money for our chosen organisation, we decided to hold a bake sale, in which we would all make something from home and bring it to school to sell. We also ran a ‘guess how many jellybeans are in the jar’ competition and asked students and teachers to guess the amount in the jar. This was a very successful event, in which we made a profit of $165 and we were all very proud. Four students in the group had the opportunity to visit the Australian Animal Protection Society in Dandenong, where we got a tour of the site and even got to interact with some of the animals! We learnt a lot more about how their animals end up in shelters, what the organisation does and just how important their role is in the community. We presented them with our donation and they were very appreciative of it and the effort that we put in. Knowing that our donation made a positive impact in the community, we felt like all our work payed off and it was very empowering.

Finally, we had to make a presentation detailing our process and present this in front of all the schools involved, at the Monash University Peninsula Campus. It was great to see the wide range of different projects presented by the schools. Overall, this program allowed us to further develop/expand our community leadership skills and it was a great experience for us all.

By Renae Hartney and Eirrah Bautista, Year 10.