Be Bold Be Heard
BBBH FORUM 5TH MARCH 2024
On Tuesday, 5th March, our new group of inspiring Year 9 and 10 students began their Be Bold Be Heard journey. The program itself, has now grown to include 15 schools and 140 students.
The first forum was held at GMHBA stadium, seeing Nya Tut (North Geelong Secondary College student leader and member of BBBH) open 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 fruit received further inspirations from our guest panel.
From left to right:
- Mick O’Malley
- Renee Garing
- Lyndelle Zuccolin
- Allyson Brown
- Jade Hamilton
- Nova Clough
- 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 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 exciting. 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.
Our 2024 Be Bold Be Heard group will work through their action plan to implement positive change in their ‘quick wins’ and small projects across the school, with the guidance and mentorship from last year’s Be Bold Be Heard students in preparation for their next forum being held in May.
Stay tuned for this positive and exciting process!
