Principal's Message

Reunion Island Visitors

We have been blessed by a visit from our Reunion Island exchange students and teachers. This is a program that has been going for 17 years and it brings so many positive experiences for our own students, as well as theirs.

I want to thank the students and their families who have hosted the Reunion Island visitors – thank you for supporting our exchange program and providing a welcoming and supportive environment for our guests.

Let me share with you a few ‘fun facts’ about Reunion Island.

1. It is a region of France – Region 974. This is why they have this number on their souvenirs.
2. The island is located in the Indian Ocean near Mauritius.
3. It is 63 km long and 45 km wide and totals about 2500 square km – Tasmania is 298 km wide and 22 km long and totals about 68, 000 square km of land. So Reunion Island could fit into Tasmania 27 times – it is not very big!  It has a population of 865,000 people.

Like Australia, Reunion Island is a very multi-cultural society. What struck me when I visited there last year with our school group was just how well they celebrate the diversity in their culture.   People from a diverse range of cultures - various African nations, Asian nations and European nations - live, work and play together very harmoniously.

In their Capital City, St Denis, in one of the main streets there is a Catholic Church, a Muslim Mosque and a Hindi Temple. So they have no problem accepting that people have different religions and cultures and they just get on with their lives!  Our Reunion Island friends might teach us a thing or two!

All of us need to learn to accept our differences - our cultural differences, our sexual differences, our physical differences, our social-economic differences, our religious differences. But there is a more important lesson to learn than just the acceptance of difference.  If we can truly understand and celebrate our differences, all of us will have richer and more productive lives.

I sincerely thank our Reunion Island visitors for shining a light for us in our quest to be able to celebrate our differences here at MFG.

We wish them a safe journey home and look forward to meeting them again in 2019.