Enhance Term 3 2025 Week 1

Hello everyone and welcome to our first blog post of the term!

These blogs will be used to keep everyone up to date with what’s been happening each week, an insight into student’s favourite moments and some great photos!

We started our Term 3 leadership program on Tuesday the 12^th of August of the Edge Youth Services. We had a short introduction and played some ice breaker games. We introduced our core values for the term and created our own leadership mission statement. The 5 values students agreed on were responsibility, understanding/displaying empathy, kindness, honesty and respect! After this we headed to the Collingwood English Language School (South Morang Campus) where students met a group of second language primary students who they will be working with this term, our students prepared letters to read to students and worked on a name poster.

On Wednesday we headed off on our first camp of the program, our city camp! Our first activity of the day was a tour and session at the Australian Catholic University, students experienced what a real university class looks like, meeting lecturers and playing games with education students. Following this we visited the East Melbourne fire station, which was once known as the biggest in the southern hemisphere! Firefighters Sal and Owen ran a short leadership talk before students were taken on a tour and met more of the team. They were shown the infamous fireman’s pole and uniform room where students saw in real time firefighters responding to a call, rushing out the door in under 90 seconds! The firefighters at east Melbourne were generous enough to set up the fire hose for our students to try and explained the different equipment they use.

After this we headed to our first community organisation, where students met the executive director of the Good Friday Appeal, Rebecca Cowan. They learnt all about the organisations and the fundraisers they run. This was some great insight into different projects they could be a part of and an awesome opportunity to ask lots of questions. After a well-deserved rest and some dinner, we headed to the Eureka Sky deck where students experienced a Virtual Reality simulator and went up the 88^th floor to see the beautiful city lights and experience ‘The Edge’ which suspends us in a glass tube nearly 300 metres above the ground!

On Thursday students participated in Operation Newstarts version of the ‘amazing race’. They were split into 2 teams and given questions and a map of the city with clues to answers located all over the grid. With a 2-hour time limit they had to get as many points as possible! Both teams finished on time with an impressive number of questions answered, stay tuned to find out the winners! We stopped for some lunch before heading to our final activity of the camp, Rock climbing! Everyone gave it their best efforts climbing insanely tall rock-climbing walls many reaching the very top, with help from their peers who belayed them. It was an awesome end to the camp!

Friday's adventure took the students underground into the beautiful Britannia Creek Cave. Nerves and anticipation were high on the 1.5 hr drive up. We gathered our overalls, helmets, torches and emergency kit, debriefing about the safety instructions, how students are feeling and focused on how they can be a leader within the cave. Students navigated the tight spaces, crawling through the beautiful natural cave and trekking through some running water. Brendon, Micaela and I are extremely proud of the student’s bravery and determination with many opting to go back into the cave to do it again!

At the end of the week, we asked Ephraim and Oliver to recall their favourite moments

What was a highlight from this week?

Ephraim: “being able to stay the city with everyone and getting to sleep in the penthouse”

Oliver: ‘rock climbing”

What is one skill you learnt that you’re going to use in the future?

Oliver: “working with others more and using leadership skills”

Ephraim: “working with others”

What leadership style did you represent this week?

Oliver: peer leadership, because I was able to encourage everyone and worked with different ideas in the amazing race

Ephraim: peer leadership, especially in the caves helping everyone”

What a great and hectic start to the program, well done everyone on getting through this week with an awesome attitude, we look forward to week 2!