BBBH FORUM 5^TH MARCH 2024

The Be Bold Be Heard initiative has now grown to include 15 schools and 140 students. It is fantastic for students to be involved and interact with such a diverse range of students from Geelong and surrounding schools and the following are the schools who participated in the first forum:

• Belmont High
• Bellarine Secondary College
• Clonard
• Geelong High
• Iona College
• Lara Secondary College
• Matthew Flinders Girls Secondary College
• Newcomb Secondary College
• North Geelong Secondary College
• Sacred Heart
• Tarneit P-9

(Bannockburn, Northern Bay, Surf Coast and Western Heights all to join in term 2)

On 5th March, at GMHBA stadium our students took part in the first BBBH Forum for 2024. Nya Tut (North Geelong Secondary College student leader and member of BBBH) opened the day with an enthralling speech about her journey in BBBH and completing in her completion of the Kokoda trek that impressed students, staff and community leaders immensely.

The first Forum is to inspire students to start identifying changes they can make in class, college and community that they would like to pursue (to tackle gender difference in student engagement, voice and agency) and Nya certainly launched them into this successfully. Students were then given guidance and advice on starting to allocate roles within a working team and some team building activities, led by Respectful Relationships leaders Raelene Newton and Rachel Johnston (pictured below).

After a quick morning tea, students, filled with jam doughnuts, danishes and fruit received further inspirations from our guest panel.

From left to right:

1. Mick O’Malley
2. Renee Garing
3. Lyndelle Zuccolin
4. Allyson Brown
5. Jade Hamilton
6. Nova Clough
7. Brad Headlam

Lyndelle Zuccolin, who is the founder and managing director of strategic management consultancy Just Add Colour and board director of Skate Australia and likes to challenge the way we think. Jade Hamilton, the General Manager of Lazarus Community Centre. A social worker who loves helping those that cannot help themselves encouraged students to ‘find their tribe’. Michelle Gerdtz is currently Chair for the AFL Barwon and eager to have netball equal to AFL in all the clubs. As many of the guests highlighted she also has had numerous roles in programs and from her experiences encouraged the students to “embrace those people who embrace you”, attach yourself to positive people and keep encouraging others”. Allyson Brown, the director of Everheal and the 4-Step LIFE formula programs. She encouraged the students to not let adversity be a barrier, embrace it positively, adapt and reset your journey. She told students to “set goals, know the why and do what you are passionate about”. Nova Clough is from the Geelong Project, which supports young people at risk of being homeless, stay in touch with their learning pathway. Her cheerful presence provided the girls with confidence to reach out to others for support, during tough circumstances and again highlighted the importance of being surrounded with the right people to achieve your own goals. Renee Garing, a PE teacher and ex-AFLW player for Geelong, talked of overcoming mental health challenges and also valued the importance of having the right people around you. Mick O’Malley, the first male panellist for BBBH was overwhelmed by the discussion and acknowledged that he had not really considered (regrettably) the female perspective until he had his own daughter. Mick organises Kokoda treks and was invited to speak about his approach to empowering young people during such gruelling journeys. He talked about friendships, and highlighted hardship in his teens that reaffirmed this. He shared a quote he recalled “show me your friends and it will tell me all about you”. In addition to this he encouraged the girls to really consider two things about yourself: “The Who and The Why”.

The guests then went from table to table answering all the questions the students had conjured up. This was excellent and the students even formed some positive potential partnerships to support their actions going forward.

Full of inspiration, the students had a fantastic lunch and then went into some structured ‘quick wins’ led by Respectful Relationship’s Rachel Johnston. Interestingly, the room was still buzzing at the end of a long day and some of the quick wins and goals discussed were really exciting.

While every school had a different goal they were wanting to achieve within their own school, we all supported each other wishing for the other schools to reach their goal. Geelong High School decided to focus on looking into a project to support the homeless after the inspirational story told by Jade Hamilton, the General Manager of Lazarus Community Centre. Other school goals included Sacred Heart looking at building resilience in students to receive and utilise feedback, North Geelong Secondary is exploring how to develop effective school mentors and Matthew Flinders is continuing to explore new goals whilst launching a new assessment and reporting process for semester 2.

In the spirit of the event the students have identified that they would prefer to run some of the forums in the future, have more diverse guests (not sporty), more activities and updated surveys (2024). These will, of course, be important structural changes hereafter.

Joining Be Bold Be Heard Group gives you the opportunity to try new things out of your comfort zone, meet new people, make friends and gives you a chance to help make changes to the school while also working with an amazing group of people who could have similar thoughts and opinions as you. Overall, every meeting we attend is always super fun and we can’t wait to attend the next meeting in term 2. If any student is looking at joining our amazing team, please reach out to one of the students in the photo below or speak to Ms Walsh, Ms Gopal or Ms Garcia.

Amalaini (10MA), Isabella (10MA) and Amelie (7MA) and the BBBH Group