This year Holy Cross Catholic School was fortunate enough to take part in a pilot program called Stepping Up which is developed by the Top Blokes Foundation. The Top Blokes Foundation was founded by Melissa Abu-Gazaleh, the NSW Young Person of the Year in 2016, and was originally developed to promote healthy minds and attitudes of young adults. This year is the first year that a Primary School Program has been trialled to develop resilience, mental health and form positive attitudes of young males before they enter the high school environment.
During Term 2 the Kevin, Dave and Denis from Top Blokes worked with nine of our students in Year 5 and 6 to trial the program and today they graduated from the program after eight weeks of learning. It was great to see Melissa attend from the South Coast to recognise the great work completed by these boys and their mentors. The initial evaluation of the program from teachers and students is that the content has made a difference in many different ways.