The Multicultural Leadership Group program provides an opportunity for students from culturally diverse backgrounds to connect with others, build leadership skills, and improve awareness and inclusion of cultural diversity both at school and in the community. It is a join initiative led by teachers at Warrnambool College and the Youth Services team at Warrnambool City Council.
Multicultural Leadership Group is a space where students are encouraged and able to express their cultural backgrounds, learn, respect and embrace cultural differences. The program has been running for 7 years and is helping Warrnambool College become a more culturally inclusive environment.
The students represent a range of cultural backgrounds, and work together on a weekly basis to develop skills that will enable them to become future leaders in their community. Students participate in fun and engaging activities that help build capabilities in leadership, culture, teamwork, communication, goal setting and resilience whilst building confidence and new friendships along the way.
The Multicultural Leadership group allows students from diverse cultural backgrounds to:
- Connect with others from different cultures and build relationships
- Learn more about different cultures in their school and community
- Build team work and leadership skills
- Be empowered to set goals and
- Represent their school by participating in activities out in the community.
At the beginning of each year, the Multicultural Leadership Group identities what they hope to achieve in the program. The year generally consists of structured leadership training, various team building activities, community excursions and the delivery of a community project. The community project in 2021, saw the group produce a multicultural cookbook containing favourite recipes from their family’s culture. The group also painted a mural on a large pot plant located in a courtyard at Warrnambool College, featuring flags and people from around the world.
A key focus of the Multicultural Leadership Group is to link up with multicultural students at Warrnambool East Primary School. This provides the Warrnambool College students the opportunity to further develop their leadership skills by acting as mentors to the younger students. It also enables the primary school students to build connections with older students from multicultural backgrounds, something which can assist in their transition to secondary school.
2022 Multicultural Leadership Group
The 2022 multicultural leadership group consisted of 26 students aged between 12 and 18 years. The easing of COVID restrictions allowed for greater opportunities for students to participate in activities out in the community.
Melbourne Camp
A highlight for students, was the overnight trip to Melbourne, which included a visit to Extreme Bounce (indoor trampoline centre), the Centre for Multicultural Youth in Ballarat where the group met with other multicultural students and school leavers, a visit to the Queen Victoria markets, an augmented reality (AR) art trail, leadership training, dinner in Chinatown and shopping at Docklands. The group enjoyed the opportunity to meet other multicultural students in Ballarat, spend time with their friends and experience all the city has to offer. The opportunity to be independent and support one another in navigating their way around the city was also a positive leadership outcome.
Training
The group completed two leadership training sessions delivered by the Centre for Multicultural Youth (based in Melbourne): Positive Change Makers and Allyship. During the first session, students were encouraged to reflect on their personal values and identify areas of their life where they can make positive changes. In the second session, students learnt about allyship, including what it means and why it’s needed, and key ways we can all become allies.
Community excursions
The group went on a number of community excursions throughout the year, including trips to Lake Pertobe to participate in an Amazing Race and an environmental Scavenger hunt. They also met with Warrnambool Coastcare Landcare at the Flume car park to assist with tree planting.
Community Project: Victoria Park Orienteering Art Trail
This year’s community project involved the development of multicultural content linked to QR codes that appear on bollards in Victoria Park. It formed part of a larger project, involving the installation of an Orienteering Art trail, which was officially opened on December 3rd 2022. The project involved input from other schools, including students from Merri River School and Wave School who worked with local artist Michelle Shearer in the design of the concrete trail markers. The art trail consist of 10 bollards, each featuring three different QR codes. The first includes the bearings which are used to locate the next trail marker, and the other two will feature content from community projects such as this one by the Multicultural Leadership group and Green Futures Now
Students worked with One Day Studios to develop augmented reality animations and information sheets featuring different multicultural themes. These included music, flags, food, clothing and languages from around the world, along with multicultural athletes. Languages around the world was represented by a talking globe, featuring one of the students speaking “Hi” in multiple languages. The content was designed to be engaging and accessible to everyone. You can see how it works by visiting Victoria Park in Warrnambool – the trail commences near the water tower off Hyland St.
One of the highlights of this year’s program was working with multicultural students from Warrnambool East Primary School on this QR code project. Students worked together from the beginning to the end, sharing their ideas, researching topics and developing the animations and information sheets. The opportunity to meet with the younger students and offer mentoring, was one of the highlights for the Multicultural Leadership group.
