Multicultural Youth Leadership

CMY Short Burst Training

The Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY) is a Victorian not-for-profit organisation supporting young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds to build better lives in Australia.  Recently, CMY came to Staughton College to deliver their Short Burst Training for Leadership and Team Building.

Year 9 and 10 students from a CALD background were chosen to join this two day workshop: Andrea Kakuca (9.1), Bethany Pamintuan (9.2), Alani Apineru (9.2), Fahad Moidy (9.3), Sakir Nawaz (9.4), Stacey Tulaga (9.4), Ian Pilapil (9.7), Freedom Moeau (9.7), Fourlove Sein (9.7), Lily Taulamago (10.1), Prabh Samraz (10.1), Aster Mersha (10.1), Justin Aiulu (10.5), Natasha Aumau (10.6), and Deborah Maua (10.6).  The end goal is for these students to help organise and facilitate more activities in school to promote cultural diversity and responsiveness.

The topics and activities aimed to teach them about leadership styles, roles and qualities, how to identify barriers to leadership and ways to overcome them, diversity and participation, group decision making, and conflict resolution.

When asked what she thought about the workshops and the facilitator Tizita Yohannes and assistant Nyayoud, Aster said that, “It’s actually good. I liked that they were young and they could relate. They made it fun.  With the plane game, she was really good. She told us to get the plane to the other side of the room, but we didn’t listen carefully.  We thought ultimately, to fly it, because it was a plane, you know?  If you listened carefully, you might get it right. We were meant to walk across the room with the plane in our hands”.

One activity that Mr. David Lord was able to witness was a discussion on their opinions about certain topics.  When given the statement, “Sometimes you need to get physical to solve problems”, Aster said, “Words are more powerful than punches. If we fight, other people who are not strong would just get hurt if they were defending themselves from being bullied. If we work all of us together, we wouldn’t have to resolve that by fighting.”