Refugee School Luncheon

Refugee Lunch

On Monday 28th August 2017 Cecil Hills High proudly hosted their first refugee lunch for the refugee students, their parents and the staff.   This lunch was organised by the two Refugee Coordinators of the school Ms Sahid and Mrs Rattos with the aim of providing us refugees an opportunity to be heard and to share our stories of strength and resilience of settling in a new country.   We refugees are from different parts of the world and face different challenges but the common challenge is English as it is not our first language.

 

At the lunch a few of the refugee students and parents were proud to share their personal moments about their achievements when back home and also of their traumatic journeys to make it alive to Australia.  The pivotal moment for me was the emotional speech in Arabic given by a grandparent from Iraq who spoke of how hard her life was back home due to the political unrest and terrorist attacks and today who thanked God that her grandchildren are safe in Australia.  Her story had us all in tears and opened our eyes to how lucky we all are today to call Australia our new home.  There was also an informative talk given by a representative from Thrive, a non- denominational and non-political organisation for Refugees.  This organisation does come to our school every Tuesday to help us refuges to improve our literacy and numeracy skills.

There was a great variety of Arabic food such as tabouli and manaquish that everyone enjoyed. We all thanked Mr Sutton the Principal for his support towards us refugees especially for the running of our special English class and the refugee coordinators that helped to organise this amazing lunch.  At the conclusion of the lunch it left me reflecting how I was not alone.  It left me feeling very grateful but also sad about the others that were left behind or those who lost loved ones in war.  Overall the lunch was an inspirational event and we will work towards being surviving to thriving refugees.

Moayad Sabbagh, Year 7 Refugee from Syria