The achievements of some of our students!

I am constantly amazed by what some of our students achieve and the way their lives can change.

You may recall that last year's winner of the Adult Learner's Week Award for New Migrant was Afeif. Recently I heard 2 excellent pieces of news about him. I was told that Afeif was the opening speaker at the W.A. ACE Conference recently and what an inspiration he was for the Adult Community Education sector. And today I heard he has been shortlisted for the Kit Denton Fellowship (see below) and is waiting for the outcome which will be announced in Sydney at the end of the month. We hope he's successful as he has now made some excellent networks with the W.A. literary scene and local poets like John Kinsella.

NEW $25,000 FELLOWSHIP FOR AUSTRALIAN WRITERS

One of the nation’s leading media personalities, Andrew Denton, has announced a new $25,000 fellowship named in honour of his late father.The inaugural Kit Denton Fellowship, presented by the Australian Writers’ Foundation, was launched at the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington with special guest, acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Stephen Sewell.

An initiative of the Australian Writers’ Foundation (AWF), the charitable arm of the Australian Writer’s Guild (AWG), the Fellowship is to reward courage and excellence in performance writing and allow a writer to develop a project over the coming year. From the website http://www.awg.com.au/artman/publish/article_426.shtml

A subsequent piece of news I had related to one of our students who completed the Entree to Work course last term. I will let Anna Vanderbom (who taught the ESL component of the coourse) describe her meeting with Mohamed when she met him recently.

" He gave me a hug, and whenever I was about to say goodbye, he'd shake my hand again and tell me how happy he was! He didn't want to leave! He's working at the Langley Hotel part time - just round the corner! - Nicole found him work experience there! - and on request has just been given more hours. He asked me how my new class was and wanted to know if they were becoming friends yet, because once that happened, you stopped being shy and everything was easy. He said he's now making friends at work and there's lots of people helping him.He's aiming to build up to full time there."

"He showed me pictures of his wife and children. He just kept on saying how happy he was and how the Entree course had helped turn his life around. Basically, he didn't stop being radiant and beaming as only Mohamed knows how!I think he's a real star of the Entree course - do we still need the picture of a person successfully finding work? He's so photogenic!"

I think that these encounters really do tell us that what we do can have an impetus to people's lives changing and moving on to give them serenity and a sense of purpose and belonging.

If you have any more stories - it would be good to share them on this blog.

Sophie Burrows