• Learning to Serve
• Creativity, Action and Service

Community and Service

MLC girls have an interest in perspectives other than their own. Throughout the School they are encouraged to gain awareness of community needs and then to actively strive to improve the conditions and experiences of others through generosity of service. The Pastoral Care program through The House System and the Prefect system explicitly require and then provide opportunities for leadership through service.

Our girls and staff from the recent Nepal trip spoke along with Adam Ordish at a recent MLC Assembly about the impact of their first hand experience in Nepal

Helping the Helper -
Service in Nepal

The girls at MLC are concerned with social justice and service and often ask what they can do to change the suffering or lack of opportunity in the lives of others. However with all good intentions to make a difference, without local or cultural knowledge in an international location, the help and resources you offer, may not go directly to where they will do the most good.

Our latest work for and recent visit to Nepal have been guided by the Mitrataa Foundation, a non-profit organisation focused on exciting education initiatives to aid in the sustainable growth and development of Nepal. They know that education is the greatest single change agent in this region. And who better to help in education than schools and school students.

Mitrataa’s mission “is to empower the future generations of Nepal through education to enable them to assume responsibility for their own development and to provide them with a more stable future.”

Adam Ordish from the Mitrataa Foundation was in Australia and came to MLC to speak to the girls. He also addressed a special group of representatives from independent schools in Sydney about the work of Mitrataa, specifically targeting women and children, to assist them to gain education, employment and independence.

Adam has a particularly practical approach and demonstrates the remarkable long term sustainable change that can be made in one family if a woman is able to feed her family and pay for schooling.

Our hope is to now harness the resources, good will and coordination of several Sydney schools and, as Mrs Barbara Stone said to the visitors at the Nepal Breakfast, “to work smarter” to help all our students, help in Nepal. Still fueled by their youthful passion to change what is unfair or unjust, young people can then also experience first hand the remarkable satisfaction that real and practical input, for more permanent change, makes.

Mrs Barbara Stone
Principal

Mothers' Day Classic Walk

A sea of MLC pink caps, smiling and enthusiastic faces was the order of the day at the Mothers' Day Classic, 2008

It was an enthusiastic MLC crowd who gathered for the Mothers’ Day Classic Walk on the steps of the Art Gallery of NSW on Sunday morning. Extended families with cousins and grandparents, and many school friends joined together for the stroll along the Sydney foreshores raising money for Breast Cancer Research and awareness of the need in our community to support those families who are dealing with this disease.

MLC’s support for the event is remarkable. Our community makes one, of the most significant contributions of any organisation in Sydney. For the second year we have won the Highest Participant numbers for a School. This of course makes us very proud. We had 185 registered entry forms for the walk. What is very important to understand is that these entries often registered as family ones so the number was much higher. What needs to be realised is that this is probably one of the most significant groups in the entire walk.

As a community event, MLC’s involvement in the Mothers' Day Classic confirms how important women and families are in our school and that participation, generosity and social awareness are to be valued. Our girls are receiving the right messages and demonstrating they have great capacity to do much for the good of many.

The Mothers' Day Classic will next be held on Sunday, 9 May, 2009

Ms Pam Hatfield
Community Relations

SRC Annual Rainbow Week

Round Square and SRC, generously supported by Mr Aaron McLuckie, are to be congratulated on another fantastic Rainbow Week. This is a week dedicated to the celebration of our cultural diversity and to promoting Round Square IDEALS: International Understanding; Democracy; Environment; Adventure; Leadership; and Service. The particular focus on environmental sustainability, which had been the theme of the 2008 Round Square Conference, was reflected in several of the initiatives this year at MLC: calico banners and advertising rather than paper; a guest speaker on climate change at Tuesday’s assembly; invitations to measure your carbon footprint and donation of some of the fundraising directed to the Red Cross Victorian bushfires appeal.

Students organised a range of activities for the middle and senior school students each recess and lunch, culminating on Friday with mufti day, international food stalls and a band. Funds raised from Rainbow Week principally go to the Prince Alexander Project Fund which is a fund supported by students of all Round Square schools. The bricks, mortar, pipes and other building materials for Round Square international development projects are paid for through this initiative. As well as providing such entertainment as henna hand dying and culinary delights like chocolate spiders, all the major service and action groups in the school set up stalls at lunchtime and recruited new members.

Rainbow Week is a great example of working in harmony across different age groups, different cultural backgrounds, different viewpoints and interests in a spirit of adventure and concern for others. It helps build our community and keeps our focus where it needs to be – on reaching out to others and realising that it’s ‘not all about me’!

Ms Maree Herrett
Head of Senior School

Learning to Serve

…one aspect of empathic intelligence (is) mirroring … Mirroring can function socially and psychologically to convey attunement between individuals.’

Associate Professor Roslyn Arnold, ‘Empathic Intelligence in pedagogy’

Successful service learning programs are those where there is explicit benefit for both the provider and the recipient of the service. It is not a volunteer program or voyeuristic. It is grounded in experiences and activities that facilitate learning for everyone. Extension of the Middle School Service Learning program provids greater opportunity for girls to learn about other people and themselves. MAD (Make a Difference) days are held each term to provide personal care packages and stationery packs for the Teachers’ College in Timor, the Model School in Nepal and Samaritans Purse Christmas boxes.

The program with Merrylands School sees Year 7 students in regular and ongoing classroom visits for three terms of year. Girls learn how young people with disabilities are more the same as them as different and that in helping others learn new skills, we learn more about ourselves. The success of this program has seen its extension to Holsworthy Special School, and Merrylands School’s Learn to Swim Program.

Creativity, Action and Service

Creativity, Action and Service (CAS) is the compulsory component of the International Baccalaureate Diploma with the goal of educating the whole person. CAS counterbalances the academic focus of the diploma and aims to foster a more compassionate and active citizen.

The girls document their compulsory hours of participation in community service, physical activities and creative and performing arts for the two-year period of the diploma and also reflect on its impact on their learning and development.