In 2022, I had the amazing opportunity to work with the Cowan Year 8’s as a Peer Support Leader. The Peer Support Program runs for semester 1 and allows Year 8 students to develop valuable life skills such as communication and teamwork, and allows Year 11 students to build connections with younger students while also developing their own personal leadership skills.

Each week, we all had a meeting where we would reflect on the positives and negatives of the previous session and plan for the next one. During each session, we would play a game in either our small groups or in the large group that would be related to that week’s theme. At the end, we would have a debrief and ask the Year 8’s questions such as what they thought the message of the game was and why it is important.

I thought this was a really great experience as not only did I improve my leadership, teamwork, and organisational skills, but I also had the opportunity to build relationships with younger students that I might not have normally talked to.