Refugee Week
Cecil celebrates Refugee Week
2022 Refugee Week
Sunday 19 June to Saturday June 25
Celebrating Refugee Week at Cecil Hills High School is an annual occasion and an incredible opportunity for the school to promote intercultural understanding to enable refugees to live in safety, integrate into their new Australian communities and raise awareness, remembering, and honouring the often-perilous journey that refugees take to reach Australia. The 2022 theme for Refugee Week is Healing. The theme promotes harmony and togetherness and is a reminder that, regardless of our differences, we all share a common humanity.
We started our Refugee Week celebrations, with all Connect students viewing the powerful presentation put together by Moayad Sabbagh, a Year 12 refugee from Syria. In this presentation, he presented on the death-defying journeys and numerous settlement challenges taken by refugees who have come from afar to live and study with us at Cecil. This presentation ended with discussions about the issues affecting refugees and the positive impacts that refugees have made to Australian Society.
Furthermore, the highlight of the 2022 Refugee Week celebrations was the Refugee Week Lunch hosted by the Refugee Coordinators Ms Rattos and Ms Ishak on Monday 20 June 2022 from 01:00pm to 02:00pm in the Common Room for our refugees, and their parents. Getting families, staff, and students together, sharing a meal, and sharing stories truly helped, not only in building empathy and understanding of refugee experiences, but also for the Cecil community to connect simply as fellow human beings.
During Refugee Week, the STARS students were provided with a bilingual dictionary to support their language acquisition and to assist them in showcasing their amazing resilience, creativity, and ingenious of people of refugee backgrounds. Additionally, there were various Connect activities throughout the week that explored the significance of Refugee Week.
Cecil will continue use Refugee Week to celebrate the rich diversity of our school community and continue to build a stronger, safer, healthier, happier Cecil Community.
Here are what some of our STARS have to say:
“No matter how hard life is, you must be strong and keep going.” Rafi Al- Banaa (Year 7)
“Never give up, keep going on your journey.” – Alex Cheheili (Year 7)
“Never give up on living. Life is a gift.” – Onella Qaqoz ( Year 7)
“Welcome everyone. We are all human.” – Ghena Mahdi ( Year 8
Never give up, follow your dreams.” Alesar and Renata Dawood (Year 8 and Year 7)
Ms Rattos and Ms Ishak
Refugee Coordinators