Moreland week 8 2018 - Graduation!
Its our final week for this term and it came so quickly! The week started at our hub for this term, Oxygen youth services. We started here to end the term where we started and to work on our graduation speeches for Friday. This day is always an important one as it is filled with reflection and memory sharing. Together as a group we started by reflecting on a few moments from the term. These include our funniest moments, our most challenging moments, our biggest achievements and what character strengths we think we all showed as a group. We also reflected on what our goals are after Newstart and what we hope to achieve in the future. From this activity we then got stuck into our individual speech writing and before we knew it they were done and we were heading to Maribyrnong to join Sal for our final boxing session. This session was all about putting our previous sessions together and jumping into the ring with Sal. All the young people worked hard, got in the ring with Sal and improved a lot in their skills. So much so that at the end of the session Sal commemorated the young people on how much they had matured/developed and how quickly their skills grew. After this we said goodbye to Sal and got ready for out last practical day on Newstart.
Thursday was a fun day as we were donating the bikes we built at Ceres and we were celebrating Michaels birthday! We started the day by heading to St. Marks Catholic Parish Primary School to donate our bikes to a much appreciative family. This activity is always one that allows the young peoples strengths to shine as their leadership and compassion really come to head. It was heart-warming to see each young people work with the family to give them the bikes, teach them the A B C D of bike safety and teach them how to ride. After this fit in a sneaky bus clean then headed to Strike bowling in Keon park to play a game of bowling and sing happy birthday to Michael. We all bowled a great game, sang to Michael, ate some cake and said goodbye for the last time before our graduation.
Friday - graduation day! this is the final day on the Newstart program and a day where we celebrate the young people completely. We all met at 10:45am at Oxygen youth services and let the young people run the show. They all arrived ready to present their speech, reflect for the last time of the term and to celebrate all of their efforts. It was amazing to see how confident each young person was at saying their speech and how much they all enjoyed the term. We shared unseen photos of the term, a video of all the activities we had done and shared a lot of laughs. Thank you greatly to the Moreland city council and Oxygen youth services for providing a great space to work out of and a accessible and comfortable hub for this term. Likewise a big thank you to all the schools, service providers and parents/carers that made this term happen. Everyone had a great time on the day, a few tears were shed and the closing of the term happened. Finally a massive thank you and celebration to the young people for working so hard this term and for sticking it out. We all shared great memories that will stick with us for life. Each young people has grown and matured in a huge way and they should all be extremely proud of their efforts. Good job guys and thanks again!
End of term video:
