On March 7th this year we, your college captains, were greatly honoured to be invited to the annual high tea in celebration of International Women's day, held by our very own MP Joanne Ryan.

At this event, we were given the opportunity to meet and socialise with some of the amazing women within our greater community (the Laylor area) and acknowledge those who’d done especially significant work in the past year with an award ceremony. Although the food was notably delicious, the part that held the most significance, in our experience, was hearing the stories of the great women around us and learning how we ourselves can implement these behaviours and great efforts into our school. In this day and age there are still biases towards women that our generation still suffers with, however with the right attitudes and fight, we can show we’re just as capable as anyone else. It's our turn to step up and change the world, and we believe it all starts with our education, so we’re working on boosting school pride in order to make a change.

Thank you again to Joanne Ryan and her team for the invite, and a big thank you to Emily Vakapuna and Debra (Deb) McDonald for facilitating the event.

~ College Captains,

Alyssa and Alpheline

Congratulations to Student Leaders, student volunteers, and the College community for supporting and contributing to the IWD Installation.

We successfully filled the boards with fabulous drawings and written reflections celebrating the women and girls in our lives.

Thanks to everyone for all your effort and enthusiasm.

-Adrienne and Student Leaders

"In celebration of International Women's Day, Zandra, Kaylee, Samira, and I were given the opportunity to attend a conference and hear former + current female Members of Parliament and other strong leaders speak about their experiences and how they overcame struggles. We were also able to introduce ourselves to Nicole Werner, who is the first woman of Chinese-Malaysian descent in the Legislative Assembly as well as the new youngest member. A quote that stayed with us afterward was: "It's about courage, not confidence- as if you focus on courage first and confidence will come."

-Lam Huynh

"On Monday, the 4th of March, our school was invited to go to Parliament House Victoria to celebrate International Women's Day with their theme of Investing in Women. Five of us were invited, with three year 12’s Lam, Zandra, and Samria, plus one year 11 Kaylee. The four of us went along with our wonderful legal studies teacher, Nina.

Once we arrived at Parliament House, we were seated in the legislative assembly, the greenhouse, or the lower house. As we waited, one of the day's speakers, Eden Foster, introduced herself as the member of Mulgrave and replacement for Daniel Andrews after he left Mulgrave.

Once the event began, we were introduced to six wonderful women: Maree, who was the speaker at the legislative assembly; Nicole, who is the electorate for Warrandyte and the Multiculturalism member; Eden, who is the electorate for Mulgrave; Juliana, a former history teacher and now the electorate of Wendouree; Jennifer, a former property lawyer; and finally, Daisy, the main speaker of the event.

As the event started, Maree gave a speech. She stated that she was amazed by the number of women sitting within the Legislative Assembly Chamber, as there were only men many years ago. We were then introduced to the five other women sitting at the table. Daisy, the main speaker, began asking questions, and the other women gave detailed accounts of their lives and how they ended up in their profession.

Nicole specifically spoke about her grandmother, who survived World War two but was illiterate, and the struggles that came with her life. She also spoke about being the first woman of Asian descent ever to have a seat in the Legislative Assembly.

Another thing the women spoke about was the amazing impact of their teachers, who not only supported them in their learning but also saw potential in them that they didn’t see in themselves and helped them push themselves to become the women that they are today.

The main takeaway message of the event was that women are just as powerful and can do many great things, but you just have to allow yourself to experience new things and open new doors to be able to put your foot through life. Try out new things, get involved in the community, try out for leadership roles, make mistakes, ask for help, and much more. They inspired us girls to reach for our goals, whether they were to be a top shop lawyer or a small-town teacher; any goal is brilliant as long as you have the drive, determination and support to get there.

After the event, we went down and had private one-on-one chats with the women, asking them questions that we unfortunately didn’t have time to ask during the event.

On our way back to the TSC, we caught three trams and arrived at Southern Cross just in time for the train to bring us back to Tarneit.

We arrived back at school after catching a bus from Tarneit Station filled with inspiration from the amazing women, we were fortunate to witness. We were very grateful to have this experience and very lucky we were invited to such a wonderful event hosted by amazing powerful women."

-Kaylee Gleeson

Year 11 Art Creative Practice