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.

Monash Radio Interview

Free Debate's Lucia Pietropaoli and Rob Koh took part in an interview on Radio Monash's "The Dirt" as a follow up to our help with the Refugee Week Exhibition Debate back in July.

We were also lucky enough to be joined by participants Cuc and Meseret and organiser Kiemi Lai from the Western Bulldogs' Engaged Communities.

Click here for the interview (for a short time only!)

Refugee Week Exhibition Debate

On Friday 20th of June, in celebration of Refugee Week, the Braybrook Community Centre hosted a debate on the topic, "That it is harder for young refugees to make Australia their home than adults"

All of the speakers had come to Australia as refugees, and the audience was given an insight into both the refugee experience and generational difference. Free Debate provided coaches to both teams to ensure that the debate was fair, fun and fast-paced.

In support of the motion was a team of adults: Cuc, Mesert and Duku (pictured with their coaches Roland and Rob). Against the motion were a team of students from Braybrook High School: Monaliza, Bishara and Malaang, coached by Lucia.

One highlight was Duku's impersonation of an image obsessed teenager, right down to the dance moves. Also memorable were Bishara's arguments about how teenagers experiment with drugs and alcohol, each sentence finishing with the statement "not that I do."

The team of students won narrowly and Free Debate would like to congratulate all speakers on an engaging and informative debate. Free Debate would also like to acknowledge the hard work and grace under fire of Kiemi Lai, Engaged Communities Coordinator of the Western Bulldogs and roving interviewer on the night of the debate.