THANKS to a funding partnership between Seymour Berry Street’s School Focused Youth Services program and Blue Light Victoria (BLV), students at Wallan Primary School (WPS) are exploring their values.
Across eight weeks, BLV Facilitator, Sandra Cameron nurtured a grade five and six cohort by engaging them with activities and discussions and ultimately, is supporting them to create lasting change with a community project.
The program is known as DASH, Dynamic, Active, Safe, Healthy.
DASH has been independently evaluated by the University of Melbourne’s Assessment and Evaluation Research Centre and found to be safe, inclusive, and engaging for students, including those with diverse learning needs.
Since 2022, BLV has delivered the DASH program to primary and secondary school students to promote positive well-being, encourage advocacy skills, explore community issues and take meaningful action.
The program is student-led, and at WPS the students formed four think tanks to create a school project around community concerns (that also matter to them) and these included the be physical group, the paws care group, the stop bullying group and everyone deserves to be heard group.
Following a democratic process last week, members of the Wallan Police Force and the DASH cohort elected to continue to develop just one project— everyone deserves to be heard.
To help complete the project, $1000 in funding has been made available.
Going into the next term, students will take a series of photos featuring their local school and community members holding up motivational tips to help each other speak up.
The messages will be collated into a video to be shown to all grade five and six students, who will each be given a wristband and hear from a soon to be announced guest speaker.
Later in the year, the video will be shown to parents and the entire school community.
