Group+15

Desired Organisations:



Blog Tuesday, 8th May 2012 Today during deal half of the year 9‘s went their chosen excursions, while the other half stayed. We learnt about our temperaments, that not all people go along with each other. I was blue, I noticed that I ask too many questions to have an explanation for everything. We learnt how to write proposals and how to run meetings with agenda’s and a chair person & minute’s person. With the last 2 periods left we watched ‘Pay it forward’ to help influence us with our out reach groups and helping our community. ~ C.L.

Tuesday, 15th May 2012 Today for the first 2 periods, we were involved in a activity that will challenge us all to work as a team. We have to work as a group and involve strategy’s to achieve our goal. We played the human knot which involves a lot of communication and co-operation. Next we played ‘Electric Maze’ where we all had to pay close attention and concentration to what was happening and involve memorising the different moves to finish is without dying. Also we worked as a group and involved what we learnt last lesson about agenda’s and meetings into our group discussion. We first went through our agenda’s that were created by the teacher’s. The agenda was discussing about what our temperaments are, our strength, our weaknesses and what we can bring forward to the community. Our temperaments were made out of green and blue which at some stages don’t work well together, but with the help of our friendship it can bring us back together. As a group we had to create a statement which would showcase us and what we are made of to help the community. We had to prove ourselves to the teacher’s and present our statement to impress them which was performed in ‘The Voice’ type of scenario. We presented how As a group we aim to change the world, by starting off small. We aim to reach out to the community by helping people, along with our values respect, trust, love, honesty, courage, humor, loyalty and friendship. The only great challenge we face is communicating with each other as our groups temperaments are blue and green. No matter how hard it will be. We will take on the challenge to make a difference. We need a mentor that will not only keep us together as a group but to also educate and influence us in new ways. Our name mean’s “A little happiness or pleasant surprise” We chose this name because we want to be that serendipity for others who need us. At the end of the presentation we had to choose between most of the teacher’s who wanted us to join their team. We chose Ms. Commadeur as our mentor. ~ C.L.

Tuesday 15th of May,

Today we worked together as a group through a number of activities such as team building activities and an agenda. The team building activities were really fun and really made us think to work like a team. We played a game which involved knotting our arms together and trying to untie ourselves as fast as we could. It really gave us a bonding start to the group and really helped us because we are going to work in these teams for the rest of the year and would massively help if we got along and thought like a team from the very beginning.

There was an agenda that was designed by the teachers to give us a head start on how our meetings should run and also to get to know a little more about our group members. The agenda asked us what were our team's temperaments, weaknesses and strengths. Our group is made out of 2 Greens (Joanna and Laurenz) and 4 Blues (Crystal, Claudio, Jason and I). With finally knowing what each and everyone's temperaments were, we can finally try to understand each other and how to communicate and respond with the other members of our group. The agenda also told us about everyone's strengths, weaknesses and what each and everyone of us can offer to the group. This really allowed to know who was capable of doing jobs and roles in our group and who could step up to the plate when was asked to. But as a downside blue and green was described as not very co-operative, which "meant" there would be a lot of disagreements, but luckily enough we had a pre-made friendship which not only benefits what we are going to be working on but also benefits the group in a way that we would have less arguments when there is a disagreement. But to be sure we had to pick a teacher of a "gold" temperament which is usually described as keeping the green and blue together.

Our name was originally "M.A.D" (Make A Difference), but we thought that was lame so we tried to come up with a number of names and I came up with "Serendipity" which means "little happiness" or "pleasant surprise", at first it really didn't make any sense to the other members of my group, but after explaining the link between our values and the name, we decided as a group to go with it. The link was that our core values were Trust, Loyalty and Love, these values bring happiness or joy. The "little" element does not come from "we want to make a small difference", but in fact it means that our values, Trust, Loyalty and Love can come in any size, shape or form, from the biggest of packages like creating something wonderful that will last forever to the smallest of difference as simply as visiting the ill and just giving them our time.

On the day we also had to make a team statement which would attract the attention of the teachers. We had to present ourselves amongst the group of teachers who would want be our mentor for the rest of the YEAR. The presentation ran like "The Voice" except without the spinning chairs, but worked the same as, when they pushed a button it meant, "I want you!".Surprisingly enough we had an unexpected large response than we thought we'd have, we thought we would only attract the attention of only a couple of teachers and to no surprise was such a very hard decision to make. We needed a teacher who had a " Gold " temperament which meant that the teacher could keep us from having big arguments, we also needed a mentor who was really enthusiastic to work with us. Not only because Ms Elmer had been pointing at her the whole time, we chose Ms Commadeur because she is a fun all-round teacher who we thought we could work well with.

-P.A

Tuesday, 22nd May 2012 Today we started the day off by briefing and prayer as usual and then we separated into 2 groups; the ones who have handed in both their parent consent form and the tax mock form; the ones who haven’t handed in one of either of the 2 forms. I was in the group who handed in both forms so what we did was we grabbed our chairs and sat in the briefing area and listened for an 1 hour on a presentation about what tax is and why we have it. After we filled in a tax form, we transferred our information form the mock form onto the real tax form. A lot of people had made mistakes and so we had to start again on a new form if we had done so. For the middle of the day, we listened as a group of year 9’s & 10’s to the visitors from CRC Sydenham about the opportunities and what VCE, VET & VCAL are, to add some further future information for deciding our paths for when we move on to Sydenham or even start at year 10. At the end of the presentation we talked and asked questions to the year 10’s, split in home room groups, about what they have chosen and their experience e.g. work experience. We ended the day with our 3rd session of rock and water and learning how to manage and also creating a timetable and work plan for our upcoming exams. ~ C.L.

(1 - 5 - 2012); Today in DEAL, half the year nines, including myself, stayed at school while the other half attended their Curiosity and Innovation excursions. I learnt how to manage proposals and what to do in order to help our OutReach groups. I learnt what needs to be included in proposals for companies, I also learnt what needs to be said in meetings. Throughout OutReach, in our groups we will be hosting and attending meetings for ideas to help the outer communities, in order to have these occurring, we needed to learn what we needed to do. It was challenging also to process all the information about meetings etc mainly because this was all very new to me. This was the first time I had learnt about what organisations do. I will definitely get used to them in the near future because my group will certainly hold these meetings. I also learnt what my temperament is, this will also help in the future in terms of my group, I know now how to handle situations that may conflict my group as a whole. - JC9WONGA.

(15 - 5 - 2012); Today in DEAL, we got into our OutReach groups and continued on with our programs. We went through our first agenda in our first meeting. This agenda was designed by the teachers so that we could find out and learn our team's temperaments, this was practicing us in working together as a group and more. We surprisingly worked well and stayed on task although our group’s temperaments consists of blue’s and green’s; the opposite, but our friendships with each other had helped that out. We formerly called ourselves "M.A.D" which stood for Make A Difference, we thought that was overused and unoriginal so we changed it to “Serendipity”; this meaning little happiness and/or pleasant surprise. When we presented ourselves to the teachers on "The Voice" which worked like the T.V program itself, the teachers would have to choose if they wanted to be our mentors judging by how our group worked. We had a very surprising results due to the fact that 99% of the teachers wanted us as one of their groups. We ended choosing Ms. Commadeur as our mentor because we felt like she would suit with out temperaments. - JC9WONGA.

Tuesday 29th of May,

Today we worked through a number of activities. Today I thought it was one of the very first time we actually had to work like a team and split up and give out different roles. Although it was hard work, it was very fun not only because of the great progress we have made but also because we worked diligently and efficiently. We managed to come up with a few ideas, one of them was to help wildlife. We also worked on our group blogs updating them and creating our group logo. We also made posters that represented us as who we are, what we are all about and what we can offer to make a difference.

We really tried hard to think outside of the box and try be different in choosing our options for our outreach program. We realised that " children " was a current idea, so we tried to think of other ideas like wildlife and/or people going through depression. We ar'n't sure of what exactly we are going to do but at least we have an idea of what path we will want to take in from this out reach program. We believe that if we work with wildlife we can show love and affection for endangered or any animals that may need support. Another idea had was to work with Beyond Blue which was an organisation that worked with people that was going under depression. If we show that the people who are suffering from not only depression or any kind of illness whether it maybe physical or mental illness we will follow through on our values trust and loyalty, showing that they can trust us and to be loyal and be there for them, whatever they may be going through.

Today we worked on our blogs making it the best as we can for now. We tried to implement a couple of things that represented us.

<span style="color: #0002ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">We also created our group logo which is displayed on the top of the blog. It clearly states who we are, what our name means, our core/main values that we believe in. The name " Serendipity " is multi-coloured showing that we are broad and colourful in our thinking, it is also written in a "Disney" font showing not only representing our youth but the kind of thing we wanted to work on(Youth mental and/or physical disability). We also added "a little happiness" and a balloon to represent that. A balloon is oftenly not exaggerated as such an object that will make a person really happy, but if you look around, sometimes we don't want the biggest of things but to have the smallest of things. Most of the time children would rather have a toy or something they can just play around with than clothes because they don't really care about what they wear at the time and I know these things specially because I have experience with a brother.One time I gave him the choice between a toy or clothes and immediately he went for the toy because it appealed to him even though it was something small. <span style="color: #0002ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">All of this links in together the colour, font and symbols, it all means something and all links in together,

//"With our youthful minds, we will eventually know, that we should take the opportunity now, to learn and grow.// //While we are still young our greatest inspiration is our imagination, because more often than not, it can lead us to our greatest innovations".// - Patrick Arellano -P.A

(29 - 5 - 2012); Today in DEAL, we gathered again in our OutReach groups. The first thing we did was to put our previous reflections on our WikiSpaces page. We then customized our page to make it look presentable and so we could get marked on it. We worked on our logo and we planned how it would look, we experimented on making GIF files (animated images that repeatedly move) for our logo.

After first lunch, we researched some more organizations as to who we could work with. We have been thinking about selecting the BeyondBlue foundation. We also looked at endangered species in the wildlife; seeing if we could help them. We are not 100% sure yet if we are allowed to help animals as well. During this research time, we kept getting knocked down by the age limits to these foundations. Most of these foundations needed 18 years of age to participate in helping. We continued to look at more organizations but most of them looked at older volunteers.

After second lunch, we got onto our last task of the day; making a poster to represent our group. We included our group name Serendipity, the group members, our values and quotes. We ended up making 2, one would be placed with everyone else’s posters and the other one would go in the front of the building. Now we are making an agenda for our next OutReach session. We will be holding our first official meeting with each other and talk about what our plans are for the group, what we want to see happen during this OutReach unit. - JC9WONGA.

Tuesday 8th May 2012, Today in DEAL we were with the other half of students at school while the other half were on their excursions. We had Ms. Elmer show us structures of meetings and etc, she also taught us about our temperaments and how to deal with the different colours (Green, Blue, Gold, Orange). I fell into the Blue category, and I found out how to communicate better with other colours as well, especially Green because they seem to be the hardest to talk to. We also watched ‘Pay It Forward’ which was a film relevant to our outreach and our RE work. I learnt that to create a meeting you have to follow a guideline so that everything runs smoothly, I learnt from ‘Pay It Forward’ that when starting something, you don’t always have luck go your way but you need to keep going in order to complete and accomplish what you want and be successful. - J.G 9KO

Tuesday 15th May, Today in DEAL we worked together and ran our first sort of mini meeting following the guidelines and structures that was set by Ms Elmer from our previous lesson. We discussed a few topics together while we waited as other groups auditioned for a ‘The Voice’ kind of set up to be able to select a mentor. We found out that our group would struggle a times because we are a mix of Blue and Green temperaments, we established that at times we would have trouble communicating but we also agreed that we would be able to do work to the best of our ability because we are all capable of producing good things as individuals it was just that teamwork that would be a struggle in the future. Our previous name M.A.D "Make A DIfference" didn't seem to be convincing to us anymore so wedecided to call ourselves "Serendipity". When we auditioned for a mentor we talked about how we planned to start of small to help the world then gradually move on, we also included that we aimed to help the community by using our values of respect, trust, love, honesty, courage, humor, loyalty and friendship, we talked about our challenges, and how we will all strive hard to accomplish things no matter how difficult and how our name “Serendipity” meant “A Little Happiness” or a pleasant surprise. Nearly all teachers wanted us and we needed to decide who to choose, luckily Ms. Elmer gave us a very obvious clue to choose Ms. Commadeur so after a bit of a team discussion we decided to follow Ms. Elmer’s advice to choose Ms. Commadeur as our mentor for outreach, she told us that she wanted to mentor us because of Laurenz being a funny person to be able to work with. - J.G 9KO

Tuesday 29th May, Today in DEAL I worked with my group on fixing up our Blog page on wikispaces and I had a look over some websites and organisations that our group could possibly work with. I specifically looked at ‘Beyond Blue’ an organisation that focusses on people with depression. I thought that it would be a good idea to try and help an organisation with depression because Serendipity our name means “A Little Happiness” and I thought that perhaps we would be able to try and grant “A Little Happiness” to those who are struggling with their lives at the moment with depression. I have yet to figure out a way that our group can help Beyond Blue but it is certainly an option that our group can overlook. Crystal looked at organisations with animals and wildlife involved mainly because our group figured out that working with people especially children is a bit to common with every group participating in Outreach. Our group is still looking for options for which organisation to choose for now. In the final two periods of the day our group worked on posters for ‘Serendipity’, we got two done and printed they both looked really good but most importantly they looked “Happy”. - J.G 9KO

Tuesday, 8th May 2012 During DEAL only half of the year 9 students were present, the other half had travelled somewhere else to the immersion activities they selected. At the beginning of the day we learnt how to write proposals and how to run/organize meetings. Today we discovered what temperament we were, I was a mostly a green. We also learnt about which temperaments harmonized better with each other. During period four we began watching 'Pay It Forward', this gave us inspiration on how to improve our ideas therefore resulting in better ways to assist the community or those who are in need. -L.F

Tuesday 15th, May 2012 At the beginning of the day we had to complete our final NAPLAN tests, we only had DEAL for the last three periods. During the last three periods we went into our outreach groups, my group members are Jason, Joanna, Crystal, Patrick and Claudio. We then discussed which temperaments would work best together, and we allocated jobs for each member of the group. Previously our group was called MAD ( Make A Difference ), then we came up with with a brand new name for our group, ‘Serendipity” which is the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. We also came up with a brand new motto "A Little Happiness". Our groups values consist of respect, trust, love, honesty, courage, humor, loyalty and friendship. At the end of the day we had an audition similar to the TV show “The Voice” where we would talk about our group and our ambitions and a teacher would select us. About four out of six teachers thought we were worthy candidates. We then had a group huddle and we selected Ms Commadeur as our groups mentor. -L.F

Tuesday 29th, May 2012 During the morning in DEAL we got together with our groups and we added our blogs from the previous week. Then we searched for possible organizations we could work for/with. I searched for some websites and I found ‘The Ronald McDonald House’ foundation, I looked through the website and it seemed alright. There were plenty of ways to help all people, most of the people you could assist were children. Jason also found some good websites too, he found ‘Beyond Blue’. ‘Beyond Blue’ is an organization that helps people with personal problems such as depression, ‘Beyond Blue’s” main audience is mainly teenagers, because teenagers are the majority age group where they suffer from these personal problems. The other group members were doing their own things, Crystal and Joanna were creating posters/ banners for our group, they created a new one and they posted it on our blob/wiki page. After lunchtime we got toget her again and we had to make some more posters, we created one then we printed it on an A3 piece of paper. -L.F

Tuesday 8th May, Today in DEAL half of the year 9 students went to their excursion, while the other half stayed at school on how to make an essay. After a period of time we all began to watch a movie called Pay It Forward. The movie was about a little boy who didn't have a easy life and found it quite challenging. HIs school teacher told the class that they had to change the world. But the teacher wasn't expecting for there class or him to be able to do the assignment - C.S

(5 - 6 - 2012); Today in DEAL, the first thing we did in OutReach was go into our groups and start a meeting according to the agenda we made last lesson. We went into our GoogleDoc and started. Our first task was to discuss organizations such as RMHC (Ronald McDonald House Charity), Beyond Blue foundation and the St. Vinnies charity. When we mentioned about working with wildlife and such, we found out that we are not allowed to work with animals. Our idea with working with animals in the wildlife had completely been scratched.

Laurenz and Jason were assigned to research the organizations last week, fortunately, they completed their work in a very well and informative way. During class we had to do the research as a group. We found out that RMHC has a large range of volunteer work but they include restrictions such as a police check and a WWC (Working with Children’s Check). They help children's illnesses and they help find cures for them. In the BeyondBlue foundation, we found out that since our name means “a little happiness” it is something we can grant them, and support them with. Beyond Blue is an organisation to help people of different ages especially teenagers to go through depression and anxiety. In the St. Vinnies charity, they offer volunteer work and have a variety of different areas to work in from donations to soup vans and working with youth. St.Vinnies promote social justice and assisting people in our community. We can help volunteer as a group to St. Vinnies to help them in what they believe in as an organization, we as a group can offer loyalty, love and trust as our values into our work.These foundations that we researched fit our values. They all help out on what our values are.

We discussed on which organization we wanted to work with, all of them have pros and cons to them so it was really difficult in picking one we would work with. We were supposed to start drafting a letter to that certain organization so that we can get started in our project. We are hoping to choose an organization next lesson so that we have a week to make up our mind on what we want to work with. - JC9WONGA.


 * Tuesday, 5th June 2012 **

Today during deal we started with rock and water during our first and seconds periods. In our Outreach during the third and forth we began by starting our third meeting and recorded our minutes in Google docs. We then finished our agenda from last meeting and incorporated it into this week’s meeting. We discussed on our organisations; Ronald Mc Donald House Charity, Beyond Blue & St. Vinnie’s. We thought about working with animals but it didn’t relate to our outreach task. We also discussed how they benefit us, what and how the values of the organisations reflect to ours, how we can offer ourselves out to others in the community, how we can help them. But during our meeting we spent too much time about the organisations and researching them and how they reflect on us that we didn’t have enough time to come to a conclusion and finish our agenda for this week’s meeting. So we are going to move our unfinished business and agenda item’s to next meeting’s agenda. We have to start drafting our letter to send to our organisation once we come to a final decision to which organisation we want to help and work with. The problem also is that when we come to a final decision there will always be an age restriction to who can volunteer. Next meeting we plan to work with our group harder because today we were distracted too much. - C.L.

<span style="color: #0024ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Tuesday 5th of June,

<span style="color: #0024ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Today was such a great day for us although we did not get through the agenda that we planned for and a task on our agenda took too long to finish(Researching). But I think that the over timed research was really beneficial to us because now we know the companies that we can work with and how we, "Serendipity" and these organisations relate to our goals and how our values link in with theirs.

<span style="color: #0024ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Although we may not be up to where other groups are in sending e-mails, making phone calls and all that stuff. We have fully researched the four companies we want to work with: Ronald McDonald Charity House Australia, St Vincent De - Paul, Challenge and Beyond Blue. They all had somethings that caught our attention that right now we could come toa conclusion on which charity we would want to work with as a group. These were some great organisations that we could work with but a couple of them had things we had to think about, for example, "Challenge" is an organisation around cancer, but there is a volunteer payment required, also "St Vincent De - Paul" was a charity that worked around in a variety of areas were already taken by other groups and were also back-ups for most groups and "Ronald McDonald Charity House Australia" required a police check. <span style="color: #0024ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">A couple of these organisations also required WWC (Working with Children's Check) and we did not know if we required to have one or not, but after some researching it was found that at our age we did not require one because we are still young and don't require that documentation.

<span style="color: #0024ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Now we know what each organisation/charity offers and what they work towards, given that we have done a lot of research, we hope to get a good response from which ever organisation/charity we decide to pursue. We hope that by the end of this term we will already be in close contact with the desired organisation at the time and plan to work out something we can do to be that Serendipity for others.

-P.A

(12 - 6 - 2012);

Today we had our first day of exams, so we only had period 5 and 6 for DEAL. The first thing we did in period 5 was to start our agenda. The first thing on our agenda was to finalize and choose an organization to work with. We went into deeper depth with our selected foundations and we found out that there were required tasks we needed to do that we were either not qualified for or not old enough for. RMCH had an age limit, BeyondBlue had no volunteering opportunities and St. Vinnies had age restrictions. We are still trying to look for an organization to work with. We also confirmed with our mentor, and found out that we were allowed to work with animals, so now we are looking more at animal foundations and how we can help them. From now till our next DEAL lesson, we will have known what organization we will be working with, this was our goal last time but it has been hard searching for one. - JC9WONGA.

<span style="color: #0a22ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Tuesday 12th of June,

<span style="color: #0a22ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Today was in my opinion one of our worst sessions. Not only did we lose progression but also lost that working mentality we had last Outreach session. It was so difficult in todays session because not only were we behind enough, we had to start over. <span style="color: #0a22ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">We found out that, after 'continuing' our last weeks agenda, when it came to coming up with a conclusion, we had to scrap ALL of our companies/organisations that we had wanted to work with. A few had age restrictions, some required documentation that we did not have, also having no room left for anymore volunteers and not fitting our time-table. <span style="color: #0a22ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I was upset not only that because we lost all of our ideas, but also that some of my team mates did not "pull up their socks" and did not effectively help the team in the gut wrenching situation that we found ourselves in and continued in non-related work talk and talking to other students out of our group. Although on the positive side we managed to really confirm something we were unsure about or had a different answer to. We found out that we could outreach to Wildlife organisations, and it was something that we, as a group, really wanted to do. <span style="color: #0a22ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I hope my group can try to achieve this one goal I have in the remaining Outreach sessions we will have till the end of term. <span style="color: #0a22ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Fully devote our time that we have to this project. <span style="color: #0a22ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Seeing that we only have a matter of 2 weeks before end of term and is expected that we are already in contact with an organisation and ready to make an action.

<span style="color: #0a22ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">-P.A

Tuesday, 12th June 2012

Today we started our OutReach projects in period 5 & 6. We started by going over our agenda that was set for today and continued our meeting. If only everyone had participated enough we could of gotten something useful done, otherwise we tried to finalise our final organisation but we couldn’t come up with a conclusion because the organisations we listed down had age restrictions and our list of organisations we finally agreed on become shorter and shorter every minute. The other Outreach day we cancelled working with animals but today we found out from our Mentor that we could work with animals. So we started from scratch and are in the process of looking for more organisations that could come into our criteria and can cancel out the age restrictions. This process has been a difficult one searching for more and more. Hopefully we can get things dont next Deal lesson and finish our Agenda item that has been listed for about 2-3 times now.

-C.L

Tuesday 5th June, Today in DEAL we reviewed everything that we had researched about Beyond Blue and Ronald McDonald House and came to a conclusion that neither if these groups were good enough for us to work with simply because they don’t require people like us to help out. We also worked on our google docs in todays lesson. Next week we as a group need to come to a conclusion with what we are going to do because we are way behind and need to start doing the hard yards to get lots more work done. Hopefully next week we work well together and find a new organisation. -J.G 9KO

Tuesday 12th June, In todays lesson we were required to work hard together as a group to get work done, unfortunately not. We had just come from exams and were all exhausted from the previous days, some people in our group blamed others for not doing work but to be fair no one barely did anything. It is not right to blame individuals for not doing work when in essence outreach involves working as a "team". It is also not fair not to say that some people needed to "pull their socks up" because technically everyone did, the whole lesson was taken as an opportunity to relax by everyone so it is certainly not right to go out and blame individuals when it's the team that needed to "pull their socks up". In the lesson we briefly looked at new organisations that we could work with. It also was just annoying to get blamed for not doing work when clearly it was myself and Laurenz who researched companies in depth and found out more about them which then led on to us possibly working with them. The whole team needs to get back on track "together" so that we can start to produce the good work that we are capable of doing once again, to accomplish this people need to remove their stubbornness and be open to ideas which they may not agree with or like. - J.G 9KO

Tuesday 5th, June 2012

After our rock and rock and water sessions we got into our groups and continued to to look for ways to assist to the community. Today all of us were working well together, we all researched for more organisations we could work with/for. Today we found another good organisation that we would consider to work with/for “St Vincent De-Paul”, everybody agreed that this was a good organisation. We also found other organisations that we could work with/for like hospitals or preschools, but we were not eligible for the job, we were either too young or we required a working with children check with we did not have. - L.F 9KO

Tuesday 12th, June 2012 Today we had our first day of examinations. During periods 5 and 6 we got into our outreach groups once again and we attempted to look for more organisations to work with. Once again we couldn't find one that did not require a working with children's check. To be honest we didn’t work that well as a group either because we just came back from examinations or because some members of our group were a bit of a “bossy boots”. They insisted that we did tasks that they assigned rather than allowing us to work on the tasks that we started or were currently working on. Even when we were doing the tasks they assigned, they still insisted we were not working efficiently enough, or not working at all. Some of the members in our group said that we did not “pull up our socks”, when clearly we were working because the organisation that we decided to work with was the one that Jason and I found and researched in depth about, so obviously we did actually “pull up our socks”. In a big group or individually Jason and myself did not work as well (for outreach only), we worked better as a pair. I think that the group underestimated our individual capabilities to complete given tasks. We also has another problem, the group insisted that we should not discuss about anything that is not related to outreach, to be honest I do not see the harm of changing the subject for a brief moment every once in a while. Something our group lacks is communication, so not allowing us to talk does not benefit our group in any way at all. When we come up with ideas and we share them with the group, the group members always deny our ideas and say that we should look for more. They always tell us to look for organisations that we could work with/for. Individually I have found/suggested approximately 3 organisations; Donating Blood, Ronald McDonald House and Movember. Despite the fact that I have found 3 good organisations that we could work with/for but the group insisted that I should look for more, personally I believe that it is not possible to acquire 100 organisations each time we have outreach. As a human being I do not think I can work as efficiently as they require me to work, I cannot complete 100 tasks every single time we get into our outreach groups, It is not possible. Even as a pair it would not be possible to complete the number of tasks we are being given. Our group would work more efficiently if we all worked on separate things that we need completed. That is what I attempted to do, so that while others work on one thing I can work on another, therefore allowing our group to progress faster. If we all worked on one thing at once we do not function as well, because we could have arguments on what we want to do. Our group also suffers from being too serious, some people in the group cannot take little harmful jokes, even if the jokes are not directly aimed at them. It is not my intention to make people angry or upset, my intention is just to make the group a little bit more lively rather than sitting quiet for the whole day being stressed out because they are working too hard. I believe that I am benefiting the group by making little jokes every once in a while because it can make outreach sessions funner and more enjoyable. I also believe that taking a little break after working hard looking for organisations is alright as well because, I believe that everybody has the right to have a rest instead of constatnly working non stop. I understand that we are at school to work, and I understand that we should be serious, but I know for a fact there is no law against having fun. A solution to solve this problem is probably to remain working in pairs and to remain working on our own things that are also related to our outreach project. Maybe next time it will be much better than all of the previous times we had outreach. - L.F 9KO

<span style="color: #0015ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Tuesday 21st of June,

<span style="color: #0015ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Today was one of the best outreach sessions I could have... actually no it was THE BEST session and after what happened last week, I think we made such a big difference. Although we had our arguments today, it actually was good that we had these arguments. The arguments we had really awakened us on the project we were doing and also at the same time reminded us we are still human and we should just relax. Thats not to say kick back and not do anything but it means that we should always just stop whenever we have a roadblock and just reflect and think about ways we can resolve this roadblock. One thing that I had forgotten today and didn't expect was for our group to have an argument. The matter of fact arguments are good because its normal to have arguments and in every work place we will always encounter arguments/disagreements. <span style="color: #0015ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Arguments often lead to hatred but I am just so grateful that we are already friends or else our group would have already broken down and we would be no where.

<span style="color: #0015ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Now the positives, today we worked harder than anytime in our lives. Today we managed to find 2 options to go pursue and we have also managed to contact them via e-mail. We found the Alannah and Madeline Foundation and there was an option to work around the community. We prepared draft proposals, checked over them ourselves and with our mentor, Ms Commadeur about 1000 times to make sure we were sending everything at the highest standards. It was such an amazing feeling to press that send button, it gave me the biggest sense of relief, because we were way behind and made up on so much progress. I'd like to make a big thank you to the mentor for keeping us together through this well executed session filled with arguments/disagreements.

<span style="color: #0015ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">-P.A

<span style="color: #0d3ef2; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Tuesday 21st of June,

<span style="color: #0d3ef2; font-family: Georgia,serif;">OH MY GOODNESS!!!! I just received an email back from the Melton Shire Council informing us to contact them back for a proper assessment in our group and if they, the council can assist us. From Oscar Ramos the Youth Programs and Events Team Leader! <span style="color: #0d3ef2; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Such a quick reply in less than 4 hours. I am so proud of my group, after all the effort we put in. It paid off!

<span style="color: #0d3ef2; font-family: Georgia,serif;">-P.A

(21 - 6 - 2012);

Today in DEAL, we continued the day with our OuReach groups for the last 4 periods. We started off with a meeting and we had looked further into the community for more organizations; we needed to get a move on, this was because the other groups had already started drafting emails and letters to send to their organizations, we were behind. We had found SHINEforKids, this was an organization which helped children with illnesses, but we were pushed back yet again because their values did not link to our values. Another organization that we had looked at was the Berry Street foundation, this foundation had some options in which helping them, one of them included volunteer work, although this was the case, we did not make up to the age restrictions. Since we could not find a specific organization, we ended up drafting a letter to send to several foundations, we discussed that which ever company emails us back with a positive note, we will work with that organization. As of now, we are waiting for a foundation to email us back with some offers that we can take to help them, hopefully by next DEAL lesson we’ll have an email sent back. - JC9WONGAAA.

(26 - 6 - 2012); Today in DEAL, we only had periods 3 and 4 to work on OutReach. The first 40-45 minutes or so, we had continued on the work that we had left last week. We found out the the Melton Council (one of the foundations that we had emailed), they had emailed us back with a positive response; they are willing to give us volunteer work in which, they are interested in working with us. After the 40-45 minutes of OutReach work, we had to make a video of the whole group, discussing what we have done, what are goals are, what our complications are, and what we plan to achieve in the future. For the rest of the lesson, we had edited the video. In period 5 and 6, we had a ‘mentor swap’ where another group’s mentor would come and we would also discuss what we had done and what we have achieved. We discussed how our group was going in terms of our OutReach groups. We are planning on making arrangements of dates and whatnot to help and volunteer for the Melton Shire Council. - JCWONGA.

<span style="color: #000eff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">14th of August,

<span style="color: #000eff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> The Summit,

<span style="color: #000eff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Today we had a range of guest speakers that came to our school, Catholic Regional College Caroline Springs. They all had unique and inspiring stories but had the same general ideas. The general points that were made through the content of this Summit were the importance of education and support here mainly in the western suburbs.

<span style="color: #000eff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> This day was really great! I got so much out of it and I loved listening to what each speaker had to say. But there was one speaker that really had caught my attention and had something that caught on to me had the story about the starfishes, I couldn’t remember the name by the top my head but the story goes something like this.

<span style="color: #000eff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> “I was walking along the beach and I saw a man doing some sort of movement over and over again, I walked up closer to see what he was doing and just suddenly asked him...”what are you doing?” and he replied “I’m throwing these starfishes back into the sea”, I noticed the thousands and thousands of starfishes laid across the beach from the tide that wash them on the beach and asked him again “ but there are thousands of them!” and he replied, “I know that, I’ll try to save all of them but if I can’t”. He picks up another and says “At least I’ll save this one”.

<span style="color: #000eff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> This was something that really reached out to me because a story like this was something that what not only what means true to me but what our group, Serendipity is all about. It really links in because as I blogged before.... It’s not about giving the smallest of impacts but to at least make a difference whether it be big or small, we aim to make an impact and hope that it really turns our right.

<span style="color: #000eff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> There was a speaker that talked about how he was a refugee and how he came to Australia with nothing to support him but his education. The ability that he had to make a living and help those who were in his situation is really touching and something that I aspire to see in my group, to help those with situations that we may or not even, to those who are struggling under a difficult situation in their lives. I also enjoyed the speaker who talked about the proactive and reactive solutions to dealing with youth. I truly support the proactive concept which is instead of funding for more prisons, fund for more youth workers and money for disadvantaged youth who may be under a situation or those who are less fortunate enough to go to school. I don’t think that the reactive concept will make a difference is because if we keep building prisons, what is the point of them being there if they will not learn that what they did was terribly wrong and just remain sitting there until their last day and more often than not return back there again. With the proactive concept it allows for education for awareness and help the person make better and educated choices.

<span style="color: #000eff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> There was another speaker named Heath Scotland(apologies for incorrect spelling) who is an AFL player for Carlton. His story was so inspiring because his story was about how he stayed committed and dedicated to his passion of football and wanting to achieve his life long dream, being drafted and playing in the AFL. Early in his education from year 7-9 he really din’t take his education seriously and suffered from that because he would go out and stuff but in year 10-12 he had to really think about his choices and because he had training 4-5 times a week and games on the weekends he knew that he would have to be more dedicated and make sacrifices if he was ever going to achieve his goal. He gave things up like going to the pub with his mates, going to parties and getting girls. He put his education and his dream first and his education had a really positive impact on his drafting.

<span style="color: #000eff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> This story is really inspired me because he brought the perspective down to our generation by telling us his goal when he was our age and the up and downs and sacrifices he had to make in order to achieve what he wanted. The line, “in order for something to be achieve you will have to make sacrifices” really made me understand his point in relation to outreach. There is nothing we can do if we don’t make any sacrifices whether it be giving something up for the sake of something or giving up time... no matter what there has to be some kind of selfless sacrifice in order to achieve.

<span style="color: #000eff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> If our generation continues to grow up with these criminal acts and stupid decisions our future will not be a great one and although today 20% of our population is the youth, that 20% of population will turn into the 100% of our future. We control our future and soon enough another generation will come along and we will be expected to look after them with the world we shaped when we were once the,. I guess the main message of today, which was said is “Nothing good happens if a good person does nothing”. I believe this is true because if the right people who take pride in making right decisions that have positive impacts, do enough and sacrifice enough than of course there is only good to come.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">-P.A

14 - 08 - 12

Youth Summit Led by Les Twentyman Today we had a Youth Summit which was held by Les Twentyman who is the founder the 20th man fund. He and a few guest speakers spoke to selected students from Catholic Regional College Caroline Springs from each year level and the whole of year 9, plus Caroline Springs College and a few members from the public. They wanted to inform the youth who attended that there is a large quantity of our youth population that were involved in crime and get caught taking drugs. The aim of today was to get an idea of our surroundings and also that education is the power to our goals. Our goals can be hard to reach, but with a lot of hard work and never giving up, without education our goals would not be able to be reached. The youth summit helped me to know about my future and also that 20% of our population are youth and it will become 100% of our future. Our future is important because even today, we are the voice of the future, we get to choose who we want to be and what we want to achieve in our generation. They spoke about being proactive and that to be proactive you have to start before the event happens to prevent any risks of the difficulty ahead. Also the opposite proactive, we is to act when it happens, which will be too late and it might risks the safety of others, this is called reactive.

- C.L

(14 - 8 - 2012)

Today for DEAL, the whole year 9 level had a Youth Summit, many public speakers came in talked to us, plus other community members. The main reason why they came and spoke to us today was that they talked about us, as students, continuing our studies until the very end so that we are successful in the near future. They informed us on the influences that we can get from our peers and how they can affect our future. We learnt that we are the voice of the future and that we need to be raised in a good manner so that the future monarchy is sensible. We also learnt about being proactive and reactive; proactive meaning providing more money to education so that the youth is educated, or reactive meaning more money provided for the jails and prisons. We also learnt about experiences form the speakers, and what they went through in order to get where they are now. - JC9WONGA

(21 - 8 - 2012):

Today during our OutReach programs we continued on our projects. We started off with a meeting to catch up on what the group has done; last DEAL lesson half of the group was away at production. We talked about what the other group did in the last lesson and what they had achieved. Since the OutReach program has new boundaries due to new laws, we now have to prepare for the OutReach festival. We have 4 weeks until the actual festival, I think we’ve been working reasonably well; we’ve been planning out our ideas and thoughts so that we are prepared. I think that the group has improved since the the very start, the relationships that we have created in the group has definitely benefitted the group. We have finally chosen an organisation to work with, we have picked St. Vinnies and they support the homeless and those who are unfortunate.

For our stall in the festival, we have planned to put a place where the donations are gonna be, we have also planned to have our posters, the banner; we don’t know what else we should put in the stall.

This lesson, I have planned an outline on what the banner will look like, everyone also had their own jobs. Hopefully, we are not knocked down by our decisions this time. - JC9WONGA

14th Tuesday August 2012 Today we had a youth summit which was led by Les Twentyman who is the head and founder of the 20th Man Fund. The Youth Summit was held in our school hall, the stage was set up and there were many TV cameras around the area. There were many guest speakers that talked about different things that occur in our community today, or past experiences they have had. The main purpose of the Youth Summit was to encourage us students to remain in school. To be honest I didn’t really enjoy sitting down a a long period of time listening to people talk, despite this I think that the Youth Summit was a still a valuable presentation because it encouraged us to do our best so we would have a good future. During the Youth Summit a learnt a very valuable piece of information, I learnt that education is the key to success and that education is power, this means if we have education and knowledge we will have more opportunities in life. Towards the end of the day all of us gathered in the briefing area and we discussed the terms “proactive” and “reactive”. Proactive meaning preventing or doing something prior to a situation, and reactive which is the opposite, taking action after something has occurred. Later that night I found out that the Youth Summit was broadcasted in SBS, SBS talked about what happened on the day. -L.F 9KO

14th Tuesday August 2012 Today in DEAL we did something a little different, today was mainly about someone coming in to talk to us about what he was doing, it was the youth summit. In the youth summit we were told many different things. We had speakers come out and talk about life of the same age us and what happens to the kids, one thing I remember was that for a kid to get suspended or even expelled would be a bad thing for them, keeping the child in school was a very good thing because it was highly unlikely for them to get into trouble and same if they were suspended. We even had a footballer come out today to talk to us about how you have to just keep on trying and to never give up because if you don't give up, you will achieve what you want. We were also on SBS but i didn't know.

C.S

(28 - 8 - 2012); Today during our OutReach programs we continued on our projects. We started off with a meeting; we got a new challenge set to us. The group had to come up with a new way of publicizing our stall for the upcoming OutReach festival on the last week of term. We came up with the idea of having the posters that we made last week hanging on 2 of our members, and that they could walk around; using that to advertise our stall. We also printed several copies of the posters so that we could pin them around the school; which we also managed to do. We put posters up in the gym, in the Arts Building, the year 8 area and the year 7 area. We also decided to make a giant banner that says our name so that we are clearly recognized by our fellow classmates. One of the challenges today was coming up with a new way of publicizing our stall; luckily one of our group members (Laurenz) had already thought about this a couple weeks before. We have now made a great improvement in our progress and our stall is well and truly under way. - JC9WONGA

28th Tuesday August 2012:

Today during outreach we got into our groups once again. At the beginning of todays outreach session I suggested an idea to make our group more publicised, I suggested that one of us should wear a sandwich board (like a poster but can be worn) on the day of the festival, luckily we were the first to think of this idea and we were allowed to do it. After getting permission for a sandwich board some of us made posters to advertise our group, we printed them on A4 and A5 pieces of paper. After lunchtime we got together again and we stuck our posters onto coloured paper so that our posters would contrast more with the background and so they are noticed. Jason had hurt his ankle during lunchtime so the rest of the group was gone, some escorted Jason to the sick bay, and others got our posters laminated. I was the only member of the group left in the classroom so I decided to make some decorations for our stall, I started off making some origami sculptures, I made a flower. After I had completed my decoration, I left the classroom to search for the others. When we all returned to the classroom we thought of a very good idea to make our group more noticed, we thought of making a giant poster saying “Serendipity” on it. Our objection was to trace letters onto the giant pieces of cardboard and then to cut them out leaving a hole in the cardboard, then we would get a variety of different coloured paper and stick it on the back creating a nice and colourful poster. Me and Patrick were in charge of this project, firstly we got Crystal to trace the letters on the giant pieces of cardboard then me and Patrick would cut them out using a Stanley Knife. Cutting the cardboard was harder than we thought, it was very difficult to cut the cardboard neatly and precisely. For the rest of the day me and Patrick just worked on the poster.

-L.F 9KO

Outreach festival day.

<span style="color: #0025ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> 18th of September.

<span style="color: #0025ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Today was really fun! Even though all those water balloons were being thrown at me and some hurt a bit and felt cold at times. I’m actually surprised things ran smoothly and we didn’t have any arguments. We all had a good time until the accident happened. It hurt so much. I really hated how some of the year 10’s actually reacted as they did whatever they wanted and didn’t follow the rules and resulted me being in so much pain, especially that they were ear 10, I’d like to think that they would be much more responsible.

<span style="color: #0025ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Anyways today was really successful and we were able to collect five full donated bags and we were really happy with the response to our stall. I think that we came up with a really great idea and that it was really innovative. We started with 400 balloons and had collected an extra 200 balloons donated to our stall. It was really heart filling to see the smiles on people faces to know that we were the cause of it. Now we can say that we have tried to make a change in someones life, and we’ve done something in thought of others.

<span style="color: #0025ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Thanks to St Vinnies who allowed us the opportunity to work with them and represent them in the outreach festival.

<span style="color: #0025ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">-P.A