ILSC Updates

ILSC Australia Student & Community Outreach Team

The ILSC Australia Student & Community Outreach Team (aka the SCO Team) is a relatively newly formed team consisting of Catherine Hamilton and Anzhelika Sargsyan, both National Coordinators of Student & Community Outreach. This team was created to service the many and varied needs and requests of students and staff when it came to ILSC activities, study group tours, and community outreach opportunities. Since its inception, they have collaborated with many different ILSC teams across the globe and have achieved remarkable outcomes, many of which sit on the more creative and even somewhat quirky side of regular.

ILSC Humanitarian Scholarship

First up, we would like to remind all our dedicated readers of the ILSC Humanitarian Scholarship. Initiated in July of 2023, the ILSC Humanitarian Scholarship was officially launched so as to broaden the repertoire of the much loved #ILSCGives initiative by supporting refugees and their families in overcoming language barriers to further education and employment in Australia.

Eight scholarships have been made available quarterly throughout the course of the year at all ILSC Australia campuses, providing three sessions of English language study, all learning materials and resources, and all administrative fees.

It is thrilling to observe as applications roll in, and we will be sure to post further updates about the participants’ progress and the program outcomes.

We are very grateful to our local teams for their support and for the new connections at the Asylum Seekers Centre and Jesuit Refugee Service, among other organizations, who have assisted in promoting the scholarship within the Australian refugee community.

Study Groups

It would be remiss of us to not make a mention of the study groups hosted thus far.

2023 has been none other than an exciting period, marked by a reclaimed interest in study group tours at ILSC after a challenging recess due to the global pandemic. We were delighted to host groups from diverse linguistic, cultural and academic backgrounds, ranging from high schoolers from Taiwan and the UAE to university students from Japan, to cohorts of international workers in Regional Victoria.

The collaborative efforts of our Sales, Academic, Student Services and Accommodations teams across all campuses, as well as in ILSC HELLO, led the groups with the utmost of professionalism and expertise, creating a fully immersive and thrilling journey for the participants. Students not only expanded their academic knowledge, but also built new friendships and raised cultural awareness and a sense of embracing diversity across their generation.

Looking ahead, we eagerly anticipate expanding the scope of our study tours in the upcoming year and welcoming even more study groups from a variety of countries.

ILSC Language Schools Australia study group participants.

News on the Café Skills Front

Café Skills teachers have been going at it hammer and tong, as the Café Skills classes returned with a vengeance in 2023. The Café Skills course remains a hugely popular highlight of the student journey at ILSC as well as our partner agents Café Skills Workshops.

This year, the successful implementation of Square at all ILSC Australia campuses has allowed our Café Work Skills classes to come face to face with the cashless future. Done in in collaboration with the Finance Team, this project has reduced the inconveniences of storing cash on site and has provided our students with a simple and clearly preferred payment method.

Exposure to this new POS system has also furthered the real-world experiences our students gain from the Café Work Skills class, broadening their skill sets as they prepare to graduate from ILSC.

Our transition to Square has also given our local Activity and Community Engagement Coordinators an alternative method of collecting donations during fundraising events, helping us raise on average over double the amount we would usually have raised through cash alone, which will be quite impactful on the community organisations we aim to support.

Partnerships

ILSC & Greystone College Australia has been working on various exciting partnerships with external organisations to enhance the overall student experience. Our Activities and Community Engagement Coordinators are constantly on the lookout for opportunities for students beyond the school, and we are happy to announce two major new and recently established partnerships.

The first is with TRAVELLO, a travel agency that has given our students convenient access to personalized travel advice, travel discounts and weekly suggestions of fun and adventurous trips and tours.

As our students increasingly book through the ILSC ‘Student Deals’ page, Travello has helped us provide additional ways to incorporate travel more widely into what is on offer at ILSC. They are now providing monthly prizes to all our Student Ambassadors and to our Sydney Super Students, as well as frequently donating trips during charity fundraising events, and as a result, our students are seeing ILSC’s ability and readiness to help create transformative experiences beyond the classroom. Most recently, we collaborated with Travello to run an ILSC-only Easter Whitsundays trip, which promises to be an exciting trip that will be made available to all interested students at all campuses.

Virtual Internships

Our internships also deserve a look-in, and in fact, we are pleased to announce a partnership with the aptly named ‘Virtual Internships’. Our partnership with Virtual Internships provides ILSC and Greystone students with an opportunity to bolster their work experience within their chosen career fields at a discounted rate.

This internship program guarantees students remote work, fitting around their current commitments whilst also offering an exceptional level of support and guidance to ensure they complete their program well-equipped for the employment market.

Job Club

And to top it all off, we have launched Job Club. Based on the Canadian model, ILSC and Greystone College Australia now offers a 4-week Job Club to equip our students with the skills and knowledge they need when searching for employment in Australia. The club is run every session on all campuses throughout Australia and is proving once again to be a tried-and-true addition to the activity selections.

We hope you have enjoyed this recap of activities, events, opportunities, and outreach, and we want to thank the many people involved in making these (and so many other) projects a reality. The success of the SCO Team is first and foremost based on the collaboration with the wider ILSC and Greystone College communities both locally and globally, so thank you for the amazing support in 2023! We would be most grateful for any further ideas to come flowing in, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to suggest an initiative or know of a community project or organisation that sounds like it might fit the ILSC & Greystone College bill.

See you at the next event!

Student & Community Outreach Team