Harmony Day - Ashleigh Gallagher, Social Work Student UNISA
‘In Strength and Kindness St Pius X community embraces diversity…’
This Thursday, 21st March, will be the 20th anniversary of Harmony Day, a national day to celebrate the diversity of cultures in Australia. Over the last 70 years more than 7.5 million migrants have made Australia their home, and in 2019 nearly half of all Australians were either born overseas or have a parent who was. We certainly have become an outstanding cultural mosaic!
These numbers are reflected at St Pius X School where there are students from many cultural backgrounds. This unity of families from different cultures is something beautiful, where learning about and sharing cultural practices, languages, food and arts is encouraged. This sense of shared culture and diversity helps to make the St Pius X community what it is.
The message of Harmony Day is ‘Everyone Belongs’ so I thought that it would be the perfect opportunity to celebrate the diversity at St Pius X School. I will be facilitating a lunchtime activity where students can create paper doll chains to be placed in the school and orange bracelets to be worn as orange is the colour of Harmony Day.
As a side note, I would like to acknowledge all those who I didn’t get a chance to talk with while I was frantically serving coffee on Grandparents Day – if you see me about the place, please feel welcome to come up and say hello!