What is Harmony Week?
It is a time to celebrate Australian multiculturalism, and the successful integration of migrants into our community.
Australia is one of the most successful multicultural countries in the world and we should celebrate this and work to maintain it.
Harmony Week is about inclusiveness, respect and belonging for all Australians, regardless of cultural or linguistic background, united by a set of core Australian values.
Scouts
Our first events this week were at Scouts on Tuesday. We started the evening with a talk on campfire safety and completing the previous weeks exercise on the recovery position and what to do in an emergency. This is all part of the linking process a number of our Cubs are going through before they formally join Scouts in a week or two. After that we got on to the Harmony Week activities.
We began with a discussion on what harmony week is and how it is really a daily part of life here in Australia, this was reinforced with a few facts:
- nearly half (49 per cent) of Australians were born overseas or have at least one parent who was
- we identify with over 300 ancestries
- since 1945, more than 7.5 million people have migrated to Australia
- 85 per cent of Australians agree multiculturalism has been good for Australia
- apart from English, the most common languages spoken in Australia are Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Italian, Greek, Tagalog/Filipino, Hindi, Spanish and Punjabi
- more than 70 Indigenous languages are spoken in Australia.
We then went in to a role play where the Scouts selected 5 things they could not live without, and were then forced in to a situation where they had to leave their home and country and move abroad. Which things could they take with them, which had to be left behind, how would they feel about starting a new life without the things they currently feel are the most important to them and what would they find most important in their new home.
We rounded off the evening with a crossword puzzle about harmony, there was not enough time to complete this so everybody needs to complete at home and bring it back next week please.
Cub Scouts
Our Cubs Scouts program was 100% about Harmony Week, after parade we began with an African game called ‘Catching Stars’:
• Divide in to two even groups, the Stars and the Catchers. Catchers stand in the centre of the room, and the stars on one side.
• Catchers call out “Star light, star bright, how many stars are out tonight” and the stars reply “More than you can catch” at which point they run to the other side of the room and try not to get tagged by the catchers.
• The winner is the last person to get caught.
We ran the game in the sixes first, and then again with different groups as the catchers until everybody was exhausted already!
We then had a quick talk about what Harmony Week is all about, before before getting straight on to another activity ‘Saying Hello’.
Each Cub Scout learnt how to say an informal ‘Hello’ in a different language, they then all went around and said hello to each other and leaders with their newly learnt word.
• As-salām ‘Alaykum – Arabic
• Konnichiwa – Japanese
• Namaste – Sanskrit word used as traditional greeting in India
• Yia sou – Greek
• Privyet – Russia
• Nĭ hăo – Chinese
• Salut – French
• Hola – Spanish
• Guten Tag – German
• Ciao – Italian (used for hello and bye)
We then played Harmony Circle, where the Cub Scouts stood in a circle and passed a ball between each other. To warm them up at first each time they passed the ball they just said their name. After everyone had a turn they did the same thing but called out the country they were born in, then we carried on the same but called out the country parents were born in. The Cubs learnt from this that about 10-15% of them were born overseas and came to Australia, and that about 30-40% had a parent were born overseas who came to Australia. This helped to show them that as we go back through our histories we can see that more and more of us have a relative who came to start a new life here.
It was now time to learn what we all had in common. Each Cub had a questionnaire to fill out where they would list things like eye colour, favourite food, least favourite food etc. They then had to talk with their fellow Cubs and see how else had the same choices at them. The final question on the sheet required each Cub to talk with another Cub that they perhaps did not know so well and find out one new thing that they both had in common. It was great to see all the Cubs engaging with each other and discovering that while we are all different we all have similarities too.
We followed this with a true story about brothers Omar and Saad, two scouts from Syria who fled the war their and eventually arrived in Australia and were able to start new lives here. You can read their inspiring story here.
The last game for the night was a Word Scramble Relay. The Cubs divided in to their sixes and took it in turns to run to the other end of the hall and collect a clue card, once they had all their clue cards they needed to unscramble the Harmony Day words on their sheets and decipher the final message. It was a close run battle with White Six in the lead until the very end when Red Six got the final message first by just a couple of seconds, well done to both teams for getting them all correct!
The nights program over there were still a couple of very important things to get through.
As the final part of his Grey Wolf badge one of our Cubs presented his reflection on completing all the requirements, and also received his Gold Boomerang!
Then lastly, but buy no means least, all the Cubs who had taken part in the last two Grey Wolf hikes received their 10km hiking badges. These badge are cumulative throughout your time in Scouts.
A great night for sure!
