By Gabriella Payne
Ten bright, up-and-coming stars from Dandenong High School have been chosen to participate in the Skyline Education Foundation’s 2021 program, joining a record number of high achieving VCE students from around the state as they further their education and help create a better future for all.
Believing that all students should have the opportunity to reach their full potential, the Skyline Education Foundation has been helping empower academically talented VCE students from socially and economically challenged backgrounds for years now, helping them overcome adversity and achieve their full potential.
The amazing work being done by this organisation has not gone unnoticed, with the Bank of Melbourne Foundation recently awarding Skyline their inaugural multi-year grant of $500,000, which over the next three years, will help an extra 90 students and their families reap the benefits of this program.
Thanks to this grant, Skyline will support 133 new students from 26 schools across Victoria transition from year 10 into their final years of secondary school, with 10 of these students being pupils from Dandenong High School.
Michaela Abraham, one of Dandenong High School’s high achievers who will be joining Skyline’s 2021 program said that she was “incredibly honoured” to have been chosen to take part.
“The term serendipity comes to mind, because I didn’t ever think that I would be given this opportunity,” Ms Abraham said.
“When I consciously made the effort to do well at school, I had no intention of getting any kind of scholarship or anything like that. I just didn’t have any idea where this would lead me, but I am very happy to be a part of the Skyline family.”
Ms Abraham is a talented, high-performing student, a strong swimmer and has a keen interest in learning about health and the human body, hoping to one day work in the medical field.
Her family immigrated to Australia from Ethiopia before she was born, hoping to find a better life here but her father, who studied business information systems and was also one of the best in his class, has struggled to find work.
Ms Abraham said that her father had been a huge inspiration for her in pursuing and fulfilling her academic potential, and she aspired to follow in his footsteps and make him proud.
“He’s been a very influential part of my life,” she said. “He’s been mentoring me, so I think the partial reason why I got this opportunity was because of my Dad and his influence in my education and in my mental wellbeing.”
Ms Abraham joins the program along with nine fellow Dandenong High students, including Aditya R, Alanna E, Alley H, Joanna A, Mahdia S, Shogoofa F, Stephanie S, Tanisha L and Vahini R.
All students will receive financial support from the program as they undergo a two-year intensive learning experience, participating in masterclasses, workshops and other activities intended to inspire the students and pave their way to higher education.
After a particularly difficult year for everyone, the chief executive officer of the Skyline Education Foundation, Jane Sydenham-Clarke, said that the Bank of Melbourne grant could not have come at a better time and it was “just amazing” to be able to expand the program to help more students and their families.
“The course of a student’s life can literally change after joining the program, like for year 12 student Steph who never dreamt it possible that she would attend university,” Ms Sydenham-Clarke said.
“Living in a broken home in a disadvantaged suburb, she struggled with mental health, trauma and had no confidence until we intervened at a critical moment in her life with emotional, practical and financial support.”
Ms Sydenham-Clarke said that over the years, many alumni had gone on to achieve incredible things and she was proud to be involved with helping the next generation of leaders find their feet.
“We’ve been operating for fifteen years now and we have many incredible alumni from our program who are truly change makers, working all across the world, making major changes for a better future,” she said.
“It is a joy to be working and to be finding these great young Australians and to be investing in them into the future.”
Ms Sydenham-Clarke said that whilst the foundation looked to invest in students who were academically gifted, they also looked for qualities like “leadership, humility, emotional intelligence” and also for those students who showed “immense resilience” in the face of adversity.
She added that students like Michaela “have the character and the capacity to withstand the challenges that come their way” and are “truly inspirational”.
“It gives me faith that we are in such good hands going into our future with these incredible young people, who are in our government schools like Dandenong High School, who are also doing extraordinary work cultivating these incredible young Australians,” Ms Sydenham-Clarke said.
