Who: Students from IPSHA Schools

Facilitator and Coordinator: WELS and WELS lead educator and facilitator: Ben Righetti 

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Registrations are open for Student Leadership Program (the Program).  In 2025, we had 150 students from 20 schools across Victoria register for the Program.   Schools, teachers and students who rate the Program as ‘9 out of 10’.  Each year, many continue to tell us that the Program was ‘definitely the best’ or ‘one of the best’ programs they had participated in.  This Program is unique and very different to other student leadership conferences and programs that may be on offer to schools.  

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The Program has been designed as an enrichment leadership development experience for any student representative from your school.  This Program will complement and enrich the leadership development opportunities for student’s back in their school community - and the student leadership program and culture in your school.  Your school can nominate any student that you feel would benefit from the Program.  This Program is equally designed for students who may have a formal role (i.e. school captain, house captain, service leader, environment leader, SRC), yet also for students who are service focussed leaders or positive role models through their actions in their school or local community.   

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The Student Leadership Program is again being offered in partnership between IPSHA and WELS (Wellbeing. Entrepreneurship. Leadership. Sustainability. www.wels.com.au ). The Program will again be coordinated and facilitated by WELS Founder and Lead Educator, Ben Righetti (MBA Grad.Dip.Ed MSoc.Dev. BSc. COR MEd*).  The structure of the Program is: 

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• Term 1 – Student Leadership Core Program.  The stand-alone, single-day, Core Program offered to all in-person at different schools in different regions of Melbourne and Victoria; in addition to the option of a live-online workshop session.

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• Opt-in Extension Program - Term 2-4 (this is optional extension program for interested schools).  The Extension Program builds on the learning and the peer-peer relationships from the Core Program.  It is focussed on service learning, student-lead service projects and peer-peer leadership learning and includes: a live-online workshop at the start of each Term 

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Schools can personalise the Program to the needs of your school and students by registering students for the components of the Program that you feel would be beneficial for your students.  School can register their students for the stand-alone single-day Core Program in Term 1, or the full year program (Core and Extension Program) that will complement their school-based leadership roles and experience.

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The aims and pedagogy of the Core Program will be very similar to the highly successful programs that have been run in previous years.  Participants will the opportunity to work in a team with student reps from other schools to explore the guiding question: What is Leadership?  Students will investigate the WELS model of Personalised and Situational Leadership, which includes 3 Layers of Leadership (Leadership of Self; Leadership with Others; Leadership as Service).  The specific capabilities/sub-questions explored will be:

• Leadership of Self (what do I believe leadership is; my unique leadership strengths and goals);

• Leadership with Others (relationship building; creating effective teams: initiative and followship);

• Leadership as Service (what is service; school service project). 

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Participants will have the opportunity to explore these important leadership concepts and capabilities through a purpose-designed mix of practical and active experiential learning activities; peer-peer learning; interactive team-based workshop activities; reflective tasks; and, initial ideation and planning for a small-team leadership and service project that could be continued back in each student’s school community.

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