Refugee Week Exhibition Debate

Free Debate was once again pleased to help out with the annual Great Refugee Week Debate.

This year's debate was held on 17 June at Whitten Oval and coincided with the launch of Maribrynong Council's Building Bridges - Cultural Games booklet. The booklet contains lots of fun games from different cultures and is part of a programme designed to bring people together through playing games.

This year's debate topic was That It's Better to Make Music than Kick Goals a spirited and entertaining debate about the merits of Music vs. Sports. Once again the debate featured a team from Braybrook Secondary College (on the affirmative side) against a team of adults (on the negative).

Free Debate's Roland Dillon and Rob Koh helped coach the adult team (Duku, Claudia and Deng), but once again the students proved victorious on the night due to their imagination, humour, logic and Chris Judd.

Thanks again to Kiemi Lai, Engaged Communities Coordinator of the Western Bulldogs and Vanessa Korfiatis of Maribyrnong Council.

DAV Development Squad 2009

Free Debate's Liz Sheargold and Rob Koh were invited to help out with the Debaters Association of Victoria's 2009 Development Squad. Each year the DAV selects a Development Squad, a group of specially selected promising debaters from various secondary schools throughout Victoria, and provides intensive debating training.

Rob presented an interactive lecture on economics and Liz facilitated a British Parliamentary style debate on the topic That We Should Radically Increase Taxation on Alcohol Consumption.

We'd like to wish the Development Squad all the best and we hope to see you again soon! (And not just on facebook).