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Harmony day |
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San Clemente celebrated Harmony day on the 27th of March, a day which began in 1999 and celebrates Australia's success as a diverse society united by a common set of values. At San Clemente we have many nationalities represented in the student and staff body, members from different cultural backgrounds were invited up to put a small flag into our harmony day cake to symbolise the unity we have created in our school. The newly elected year 7 SRC members were also invited up to receive their badges today. Here is a speech given at the assembly by Lovette, a student born in Liberia: Good Morning Everyone . My name is Lovette and I’m in year 9. Today on this Harmony day I want to share a few thoughts with you about Harmony from my perspective as an African girl living in Australia. Please take a few seconds to ask yourself “What does living in Harmony mean to you?” With all respect to you, I think that to many of you this is just a word like many other words in the dictionary. But until you have lived and experienced the opposite of Harmony- like hatred or even war – then you will never really know what a powerful and wonderful thing Harmony really is. When I was a young girl, I had a good life living with my family and friends in Liberia.. We lived in harmony with each other and I was happy. But soon the harmony in our life changed forever when war came to our country. When the war came to Liberia and other African countries we were forced to flee from our country as quickly as we could. Some people think that we wanted to come to Australia but we didn’t ask to come here – I was very happy in Liberia, before the war, living in harmony with my neighbours and other people. But war changes everything, and until you experience what war can do to people then you might find it hard to really understand what harmony really feels like. We students here have such a lucky life to live in harmony with each other. In Australia we celebrate Harmony Day to remind us of what we can do to accept each other and our different cultural backgrounds. We have about 30 nationalities at our school all living in harmony. We don’t fight with each other because of our skin colour or our language or our religion. We accept each other as we are. I know that Mr. Kelly and all the teachers work hard to make our school a place of harmony. That’s what makes our school the place that it is and the place I love coming to school because some of us here have come from places where there is not harmony. Some of us have experienced things that you can not even imagine that a child should see and if you could experience it then it would change your ideas forever. So let us all be grateful for the safe and harmonious school and country that we have. Let us all give thanks to God that we live in Harmony in this country and let us pray that we will all continue to accept each other and the cultures from which we have come. May we all continue to be people of harmony. Thank you. Lovette 27th March, 2007.
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