In 2022, when I was in Year 10 I was a house councillor for Murdoch. Throughout the year I participated in and helped to organise many activities/ fundraisers.

This experience has taught me many new skills including developing my leadership skills, getting to know younger students and learning how to organise events and contact people outside of the school.

One events I participated in was the ice-cream fundraiser. This was to raise money to the Salvation Army. As part of organising this fundraiser we had to make important decisions regarding how we would raise awareness for the Salvation Army whilst also raising money for them with the ice-cream.

On the day of the fundraiser one challenge that we faced was the amount of people coming to buy ice-cream. We only had the 12 members of the House Council to run this event, so we had to organise ourselves around the different stations for payment and flavours and keep all of the kids happy.

One of Murdoch’s main fundraisers is the pizza drive, we have run this for many years so I had experience of running it when I was a part of the House Council in 2021. However, this year we added another element to the fundraiser which raising more awareness for Rebound WA. We planned to do this by having different students in wheelchairs throughout the week in order to bring more awareness to the daily struggles of those using wheelchairs. It helped both those in the wheelchairs and those having to help them understand what it is like to be in a wheelchair. As part of organising this we had to find a way to supply these wheelchairs and how to select the students. To help further raise awareness we placed facts surrounding wheelchair statistics.

Being in the house council for 2022 has taught me many important skills and lessons. I have learnt how to delegate, as the House Captains divided the tasks to the House Council really well, I have also learnt how to organise events and all the work that goes on behind the scenes in order for it to get done. My communication skills have greatly improved over the year as we had to go to the chapel and advertise our fundraisers and we also had to communicate with multiple staff members in all areas of the College via both email and visiting them in person.