6 June 2025
David Edwards – TDI Co-Chair
As the poet and author, Julia Carney, once said, “little drops of water make the mighty ocean”. This thought, that small ideas can become big changes, was the inspiration for the 2025 St Benedict’s Embrace Symposium. The workshop-style symposium, aimed at stimulating debate and discourse among the delegates, stirred up ideas that they could take back to their schools and communities.
The Symposium started with a presentation and workshop activity led by Dr Edwards and Mrs Greeff. Dr Edwards and Mrs Greeff have worked together on the topic of Cancer Advocacy since 1987, and guided the delegates through a four-part photo advocacy programme that they can employ when doing advocacy work in their own spaces. The presentation ended with a group work task where delegates advocated for an issue in their community, creating a template for delegates to take back to their schools and put into action.
To continue the workshop theme, a series of breakaway sessions were organised for delegates. The breakaways included talks and discussions on; multimodality by the St Benedict’s Innovation teams, sports policies in schools by Ms Hlela, programmes for refugees run by the Sacred Hearts’ Three2Six programme, the complexity of building brave thinking classrooms led by the Head of Academics at St Benedict’s Mrs Nichas, and an exploration into stress triggers and relaxation techniques by the Head of Wellness at St Benedict’s Dr Lennox. These breakaways gave space for smaller groups to deep dive into topics that interested them, and focused on how to take small ideas they had and turn them into big changes.
Mr Shapiro was the second speaker at the symposium and led the delegates through a series of his political cartoons from 1994 until the present day. His wit, critical analysis and deep inquiry into the political landscape both here and abroad presented delegates with an opportunity to explore advocacy in a unique and powerful way. Mr Shapiro’s engagement during the Q&A could have gone on for hours, as delegates explored ways to take the lessons learnt from the talk into their own spaces, often questioning how to engage students in political and social advocacy.
Before the final speaker of the day, Kass Naidoo, addressed the delegates on her creation of Gsport, all involved in the Embrace Symposium participated in a post-lunch roundtable discussion. The roundtable discussion gave delegates the opportunity to connect with colleagues from other schools, and through some prompt questions, they all explored advocacy and change in their own spaces. This led perfectly into Kass Naidoo’s presentation on how she founded Gsport, the first sports award initiative to celebrate female athletes. Her passion and drive to promote female athletes, as well as address issues of visibility and inclusion in sport, gave delegates inspiration as to how they can start small with projects that matter to them and grow them into national or even global events.
Once again, the Embrace Symposium served as a meeting point for those within the Diversity and Inclusion space in schools, and gave those who attended food for thought about how powerful advocacy and change can come from something small and seemingly insignificant. Embrace continues to be an important event on the calendar for many people, and the St Benedict’s TDI Department cannot wait to host interested and engaged delegates at next year’s symposium.
