Four of our Senior students attended the "My Voice My Vote" event at Parliament House on Monday, 19 August, and were featured in an articled published in the Australasian Muslim Times (AMUST).
Our student representatives were:
- Salah Elayoubi (Year 10)
- Afeera Zafar (Year 10)
- Humza Ghouse (Year 10)
- Sabrina Ali (Year 9)
Salah and Afeera represented 51³Ô¹ÏÍø as speakers at this event discussing the reason for low electoral participation amongst youth from multicultural backgrounds.
Salah gave a powerful speech discussing the importance of using inclusive, sustainable, earth friendly speech in Australian politics free from hate-speech and racism.
Afeera shared some practical important measures Victorian parliament can implement to have greater engagement with youth from multicultural communities in a way that is sustainable. Her solutions included cultural and religious awareness training for all staff who are engaging with people in high ethnic regions to remove any unconscious biases they may have formed over time.
We are very proud of our senior students for participating in this important platform along with a select number of reputable Victorian schools. Both speeches were infused with Islamic context with verses from the Quran and quotes from Rasulullah’s (peace be upon him) final sermon.
We are appreciate this opportunity and for National Council of Women Victoria for hosting this important annual "My Voice, My Vote" event. We also thank Ms Noori for facilitating the student participation and for her ongoing commitment to developing our students as spokespeople for our community.