Merribek Term 1 Week 7 2025

Hi all,

Welcome to our final blog post for our Term 1 2025 Merribek group. This term has flown past, completing so many exciting and new activities!

On Wednesday we caught up on some journal work, reflecting on the camp the previous week and some other activities throughout the term. Our journal is a super important part of our graduation so it was great to see the students focus to complete this! We then headed off to our final boxing session with instructor Sal. The student’s skills and attitude have improved so much during the term it was great to see them give it a go for the last time and see all their hard work come together!

On Thursday we headed to Glenroy College where the crew were donating some new bikes to 2 very deserving newly arrived students. They went through the ADCDDE of bike safety, teaching them all about the importance of safety when riding and the different features of a bike! This was a great chance for the students to give back to the local community and practice some leadership skills with others! After this we had a special pizza lunch to celebrate the student’s awesome term before gearing up for some intense games of Laser Tag in Broadmeadows! We teamed up; boys vs girls to battle it out in the arena, boys coming off with the victory! Our next game was a free for all, Laura came away with the win, with Jies having a super high score in accuracy, nice work Jies!

On Friday we had our Operation Newstart graduation! Nerves and excitement were high as students had been preparing a speech to present to the audience about their time on the program. We are exceptionally proud of all the hard work students put into these speeches, reflecting on a character strength and activity they were most proud of, while also reflecting on some funny and enjoyable moments! It was a great turn out for our graduation with many parents, teachers and service providers showing their support to the group. After watching the term movie and the certificate presentation to our students and key supporters for the program we had a delicious Subway lunch!

A very big thank you from Brendon and myself for all the hard work and support everyone has showed towards the crew and program this term. We are exceptionally proud of each and every student and all that they have achieved this term. Everyone developed new skills and lots of new experiences which we hope they will take away and use in the future! Thank you to our service providers and community organisations that shared your knowledge and time this term, we are very grateful!

We hope you all have a very enjoyable Easter break and all the best for the rest of 2025, we look forward to hearing about everyone’s adventures!

Thanks,

Brendon and Laura