Girls encouraged to be bold and speak up

GEELONG’S next generation of female leaders have been encouraged to be bold, speak up and believe in themselves.

Geelong MP Christine Couzens was the guest speaker at the Be Bold Be Heard event at North Geelong Secondary College on Monday this week.

Now in its third year, the year-long Be Bold Be Heard program involves female students from the middle years of several public secondary schools across the Geelong region, and brings them together to improve their student voice, agency and engagement in class, college and the wider community.

At the start of 2022, students identified a range of actions to enact in their schools. They then shared these with students from the other schools, refined them through workshops and consultation, and aim to have achieved some success by end of the year.

Monday’s session was a progress check at roughly the halfway point and an opportunity to inspire and motivate the students to keep working on their actions, and drew a crowd of about 30 students from Geelong High School, Bellarine Secondary College, Western Heights College and Newcomb Secondary College as well as host school North Geelong Secondary College.

Ms Couzens headlined the event, speaking and answering questions for nearly an hour about her life growing up in Geelong’s northern suburbs, her time in social and youth work, about how her “anger grew into determination”, and her eventual entry into politics and achievements since entering state Parliament in 2014.

She encouraged the female students to put self-doubt aside.

“One of the things I’ve realised over the years is that we often underestimate ourselves.

“I’ve talked to a lot of women now and you often hear them say they always second-guess themselves.

“We don’t put ourselves out there, it’s hard for us for us to step up in the way that we need to create better jobs and better pathways in everything we do.”

She said she was continuing to push hard for funding to create the Geelong Youth Hub.

“Young people have to have a voice, you are our future leaders sitting right in this room.

“My message to you is that you can do anything.”

North Geelong Secondary College assistant principal Brad Headlam said Be Bold Be Heard had started with just three secondary schools but had expanded since then, and the intention was to get all of the Geelong region’s secondary schools on board.

“In our school data in the middle years, the boys are feeling pretty good but the girls aren’t feeling great, and we think there’s wider context as well that’s impacting girls – cultural background, home, all those things – and we want to make them feel empowered about how to speak up about the things that they need.”

“There’s something each term in the plan, then hopefully they make some change and their data improves.”

He said there had already been a small but noticeable shift in the data, but the intention was to get the students to address the wider issues confronting them.

“They’re really good at speaking up about things that are said in the schoolyard – ‘Come and address it with us’ – now it’s the bigger picture stuff; let’s make changes on a bigger scale.

“It’s slow change in some instances but the voices are there.”