Since the second week this term, students have been getting up extremely early on Wednesdays (as well as attending another session Friday afternoons) to partake in the BlueEDGE programme.

BlueEDGE (Educate, Develop, Grow, Empower) is a programme run by Blue Light aimed to help young people build self-esteem and confidence through an activity-based programme, provide advice and motivation, help develop long term goals and build positive relationships between young people.

The programme consists of early morning tailored fitness programme, the provision of mentors and role models, communal breakfast, and inspirational guest speakers throughout the programme.

Amber Shearer (Year 10) and Lachlan King (Year 9) have summed up their experiences of the programme so far:

“Blue Edge so far has been an amazing experience for me as I am learning and developing my leadership skills and I have also been put into situations that I might not have put myself in before starting this program. For every session that we do, we get to do some different sorts of activities that force us to get to know each other in our groups and use skills like communication and teamwork to win against the other team. It is a group of about 20 Year 9 and 10 students who work together. We have to be a team with everything that we do or else there will be consequences for all of us which would be lots of shuttle runs. If one person is late or steps out of line, we are all punished for it together as a team. Even though that would have to be the worst part, we all come out of it as better people and are learning skills that we have to put into our daily lives, for example getting in a group of people who you don’t really know and having to do activities with them and working together.

Even though I have only been doing this for a few weeks, I can already tell that I am becoming more confident as a person and a leader and that is something that I may not have been able to do without Blue Edge. We learn from the mistakes we make and do our best to learn from them as next time we will know where we went wrong and will be able to do even better than the time before.

At the end of this term, we will be having a whole day dedicated to working together as a team to complete a series of challenges that will test us and push us to our limits. This day will show us how far we have come. Blue Edge is definitely something that I look forward to each week and I can’t wait to see how much better of a leader I become from this program.” - Amber Shearer

“BlueEDGE is a safe environment for kids who want to grow as athletes and people. The programme makes us work together to complete challenges and work with people that you don't usually work with. Over the weeks I have improved my communication skills towards my friends and my teammates. So far I have learnt discipline. For example if someone is talking when the instructor is speaking, we all have to do consequences such as running, push-ups and more. So far I have enjoyed this BlueEDGE very much.” - Lachlan King