Harmony Day celebrations have been taking place across our College campuses, celebrating the beautiful diversity of our students and staff in our physical and virtual classrooms.
Macquarie Community College has always been a place where we go above and beyond to create an environment where people from all walks of life feel welcome, supported and respected. The word community is so integral to the way we do what we do because communities are about relationships built in places where people feel a sense of belonging and safety.
A Melting Pot of Diversity
The MCC of 2021 is wonderfully diverse from so many perspectives – we work with students from teens to seniors, those born in Australia and migrants from Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas and the Pacific. They have diverse beliefs, a huge range of educational attainment, varying skills and abilities, a huge range of interests and live in neighbourhoods with very different socio-economic profiles.
As you can see from the photos and videos we ae sharing of our celebrations on social media, there are many personal and social inclusion outcomes that arise from this tremendous diversity. Every day there are friendships built, support given to and received from each other on the learning journey and an important level of confidence gained as they achieve their learning and employment goals.
Those outcomes can happen very quickly. One student from Pakistan in our beginners level English class, at the newly opened Blacktown campus, needed an interpreter to be able to enrol. A mere four weeks later, that student is making rapid strides – and is already able to have a chat in English with her classmates and staff and is also trying this out at the local shops!
Growing by Learning From Each Other
So many of our students take the chance during Harmony Day to share their wonderfully rich stories about their culture, their country, their education and work experiences, their favourite music, books, their language – and of course their favourite foods! Learning more about each other’s cultures, lives and other ways of living is a key to building peace and harmony through understanding.
In these past 12 months as we have dealt with the personal, economic, local and global impact of the pandemic we have I believe learned how important teamwork and commitment are. The health, happiness and cohesiveness of our communities only happens when we embrace the facts, we act with integrity, we build trust, nurture relationships and build bridges that hep us celebrate and embrace our differences for a unified goal.
Happy Harmony Day – I hope you too celebrate that MCC is a place where everyone belongs!