Back to Issue 476 | 2 December 22 | W9T4

Diversity Dash 2022

This week St Catherine’s School experienced the joy and delight of all our students from Prep to Year 11 celebrating the diversity within our School Community.

The week started with Year 9 student, Hexuan (Helena) Zhou performing a traditional Chinese Dance in Assembly, and our 2023 Student Executive explaining the realm of diversity within our community, including cultural, gender, age, and neurodiversity. This was followed by the pièce de résistance – the inaugural Diversity Dash.

Students laughed and soaked up the festive spirit of exploding colour as they ran through an obstacle course on the Village Green in Barbreck. The spectacle was a remarkable sight with music playing and puffs of purple, yellow, orange, red, green, blue, and pink filling the atmosphere with a visual array of diverse colours. Students embraced the opportunity to celebrate each other and the diversity that each person brings to the fabric of our School community.

At St Catherine’s in 2022, we continue to strengthen and embed the importance and awareness of diversity in our education. With this, the welcoming and inclusive nature of the St Catherine’s girls is strengthened.

In running a whole school event the idea of diversity was discussed on a much a larger scale. This discussion was beneficial as students offered their suggestions and input to the charities that their gold coins would be donated to.

The ever-present student voice elected three charities to donate to. It is interesting to reflect the organisations that were selected are from three individual areas of education, health, and wellbeing, all as significant as each other. The 2022 charities were:

The Trevor Project – $217 raised
Believe: neurodiversity – $242 raised
One Girl – $256.50 raised

“The Diversity Dash was an amazing way to bring the whole Senior School together to celebrate everyone’s individuality. I had so much fun being a part of the Dash and seeing everyone having a smile on their face and enjoying themselves. It was a wonderful way to end the year with lots of colour and laughter.” Brydie Read, Year 11

“The Diversity Dash was a fantastic event which included everyone from Prep to Year 11. I loved being involved in the organisation of the event, setting it up with other students and being able to lead others around the course on the day. Everyone had a great time and laughed as they ran around the course, getting masses of colour thrown on their t-shirts.” Jemima Wilcox