Fire Sparks Success at Marsden High School

My name is Elijah; I am a prefect at Marsden and in my final year of high school I ran a community service project called Fire Talk with the help of my coach Chris as part of a leadership program called Max Potential. This opportunity has really helped me with developing myself and creating experiences that will help me in my future. Max potential overall was an exciting workshop for me, as I wanted to improve, and grow as a person. More specifically the chance to do a community service project challenged me and brought out a sense of hardship, accomplishment, and success.

In more detail my community service project Fire Talk, was based on fire safety. Due to the recent happenings in the school (as it was previously in a fire incident); I thought it would be a great idea to educate, reiterate and raise awareness to the dangers of fire, and how the students (Year 7) can plan and prepare for certain situations and what they had to do to make sure they were always safe at home from any risk of fire.

I taught them various things such as how to use fire equipment like extinguishers and the differences between the various types, how to set up a fire escape plan at home with their family, the differences between certain fires and how to deal with them, and much much more.

I created and presented this workshop with the help and assistance of the Fire & Rescue Team over at Top Ryde. They came down to Marsden High School, added more detail to my presentation, talked about their jobs, answered any of the kids questions, and overall helped me with researching and presenting my workshop.

The community service project took place at Marsden High school at 9:15 – 12:15 as we had multiple sessions to make sure that every Year 7 students got a chance to learn and take part in the workshop. However the Fire Crew did have to leave half way through as they were called to an emergency.

Overall Fire Talk was a huge success in my eyes as the students were really engaged and I firmly believed that they got something valuable from my workshop. They learned not only knowledge but more importantly skills that could one day potentially save their own or someone else's life. In fact it was so successful that I plan to make it my Legacy and hold it every year for the new coming year 7's at Marsden High school. If I'm no longer part of the prefecture leadership team, I will leave behind a booklet on how to run the workshop as well as some resources such as my PowerPoint and contact info so hopefully they can run it for the years to come.

Lastly I just want to thank Max Potential, the various sponsors, the Epping Club, and more specifically Mel and Chris for really pushing me and giving me the opportunity to try something new and out of my comfort zone. I also want to thank Rebecca and the Ryde Fire & Rescue team that came down to assist me in my workshop as without them my community service project would not have been as successful and interesting.

About Max Potential

Over 10 years, Max Potential has developed an enviable reputation as a world-class coaching program, making an impact across city and regional NSW. Max Potential connects emerging young leaders (aged 16 – 23 years old) with local community leaders as volunteer coaches. The program runs over five months with one-on-one coaching, workshops and a focus on delivering community service projects to make a difference in the local region. It was created in partnership with the Clubs peak industry association - ClubsNSW - and is supported by not-for-profit registered Clubs throughout NSW. There is also significant support from local business, community, media and all levels of government – including speeches of support in Parliament.