Lord Mayor's Student Welcome - March 22, 2014

The Lord Mayor's Student Welcome is a great bi-annual event hosted by The City of Melbourne. With the purpose of welcoming new students to Melbourne, it shouldn't be surprising that The Couch has been there since the beginning. However, this year was a bit different, with Peter and Gary deciding this time to up the cooperation by mixing volunteers from The Couch with Gary's team of student volunteers.

Five volunteers from The Couch joined the
City of Melbourne Training Session

Also new, rather than using the most recent newsletter, a special brochure was designed to help introduce The Couch to anyone who has never been before. As well as describing The Couch, we also included an advertisement for the next big event at The Couch - Night at the Circus! Stay tuned for a future blog post and more photos!

Two volunteers hard at work folding

It was heart-warming that when we started folding the brochures, nearby tables of people all came forward to offer help without even being asked. As much as their help was appreciated and taken up, it was quite unnecessary, as Lisa revealed herself to be a super-efficient folding machine. In fact, she was quite disappointed when we had finished that there wasn't more to fold.

As well as t-shirts and a surprisingly tasty lunch, one of the other benefits of working closely with Gary and the City of Melbourne was early access to the face painters. The face painters did an amazing job, working away on an endless queue of people until the event finished.

Meanwhile, maybe since starting work 3 hours
earlier than the rest, Jelly was getting restless

The weather was a little cool though, and when Christy was reminded she wasn't supposed to wear a jacket over the t-shirt, she quickly took up Eve's generous offer to give up her sleeves. Eve continuously reveals herself to be simply awesome; she is always showing kindness, always giving, and never asking anything in return.

Peter makes his arrival

Before they could go on stage, the models for the runway had to traverse the city streets from the council buildings; they gained quite some attention!

This lady isn't quite sure what to make of the fashion.

Besides the fashion show, there was also traditional cultural performances, dancing, live singing and even a reptile show.

The amazing dancers

Some of the volunteers take a moment, as traditional
Maori Haka is performed up on stage.

As well as the entertainment on stage, we also had roving entertainers and mascots. In fact, one young lady was seen next to George wherever he went; had George finally found romance?

As the day ended, the volunteers got together to take a group photo with the Asian Cup, and the remaining volunteers from The Couch went off together to have dinner at a nearby restaurant.

It was a really fun day! We got to see beautiful models, spectacular dance, funny mascots, a creepily cool crocodile, and hang out with our friends from AFIS, Chai Junction and the City of Melbourne. Looking forward to the next one!

More photos in the photo album.