Principal’s Report

IFLC Melbourne

The International Festival of Language and Culture (IFLC) is an annual celebration of cultural diversity which showcases the range of linguistic talents made by students from around the world. IFLC started in 2003 in Turkey and involved students from 17 countries. In 2014, 160 countries took part in the events across the world with more than 2,000 participants. This year, for the second time, the festival was held in Melbourne and was organised by Sirius College as part of its continuing support of a multicultural Australia.

The purpose of the IFLC is to celebrate diversity and promote inclusion. This event provides participating students great opportunities to present aspects of their languages and culture with other students from around the world to local audience in host a country.

Sirius College is enthusiastic about promoting learning and social exchanges in support of peace, friendship and understanding in Australia. The college aims to support and promote fellowship and dialogue among youth of all backgrounds in Australia. The festival displays our national treasure of diversity to all Australians and the global community.

We have organised provisions for participating students to engage with the one another and with the local community through social, cultural and educational activities. They have a chance to build strong ties and lasting friendships, which has been a wonderful outcome of all previous festivals.

We hold respect, tolerance and goodwill as the keystones to enjoying the diversity of our world. We are all linked together in a world that we share and enjoy. Each member of humanity has the potential to contribute to this world. We strongly believe that it is our duty to encourage and promote positive contributions.

We tend to distance ourselves from that which is considered foreign. Communities and nations tend to be defensive about cultures with which they are not familiar or in communication with. Dialogue is therefore the key to overcoming this state of communicative failure. Building connections through dialogue is the most fundamental step for achieving lasting, universal peace. Through dialogue, people can get to know each other as equals, which can in turn lead to stereotypes and fears being replaced by a sense of peace and fellowship. At the end of this event, we saw emotional scenes of students embracing each other, representing the world in dialogue with each other. They may not speak the same language, but they speak through the universal language of art, dance and music.

Teachers and students from our Eastmeadows Campus contributed to the performances on the night. They shone brightly and made our campus very proud. I would like to sincerely thank our dancing students and their hard working teacher, Ms Cansu Yildirim. They produced technically challenging dances with time restraints. I would also like to congratulate our soloist singing star Dileen Barwary of 8B who performed “You’re the Voice”, our unofficial Australian anthem by John Farnham. Dileen, you were magnificent, well done! Finally I would like to acknowledge the hard work of Ms Anna and Ms Madeleine who trained our talented students for the event. You are so special and we are very grateful.

“We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.” Marie Curie.

Yours sincerely,