A breakfast and special assembly, led by female students and leaders, were the major events of International Women’s Day at Goulburn High School on Thursday March 8, with a focus on the 2018 theme #pressforprogress.
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“You’re the first drop of rain in a hurricane,” Charlotte Hargan recited in a slam poetry performance at the Goulburn High School’s International Women’s Day assembly.
The four Year 10 students, Tiffanny Ezzy, Isabelle Broderick, Natalie ford and Charlotte Hargan came together to perform the piece, Advice for Teenage Girls, as way of getting the message out that being young and female should empower teenage girls to aspire to greatness.
The poem used examples of the achievements of various teenage women throughout history to inspire.
Taking the solo performance they found online, the girls split it into four different parts and added some more relevant examples of empowered women for their age group.
“We found it captured the essence of what International Women’s Day was about and how all these people through history had progressed for progress like we are supposed to do now,” Charlotte said.
Isabelle said the examples from the past can be used to inspire women to “press on” into the future and “take the next step.”
Charlotte said the individual that spoke to her the most was Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani education advocate and writer who survived a Taliban murder attempt.
”I think it is really cool that she is an advocate for girl’s education and girl’s in the Middle East and how they are struggling with their cultural and religious stereotypes they have been put in,” she said.
“She has manged to break out of these stereotypes and speak to the UN about it.”
Isabelle and Natalie agreed that Bindi Irwin’s message of wildlife conservation spoke to them in particular.
“It was amazing to put her into it because she speaks of things that relate to me,” she said.
“She has gone and tried to be as great as she possible can,” Natalie said.
Charlotte said if there was one message they would like to put out there for young women it would be to “go for it”.
“There are so may opportunities in life and I feel like life is too short not to take each and everyone of them,” she said.
