Friday Night School on ABC Lateline

For the past 20 years, for two hours each Friday night, inner-city Richmond comes alive in a frenzy of studious activity, with Friday Night School. It is a program that brings together migrant children and students from some of Melbourne’s most elite schools for a weekly tutoring session.

Over the years, Genazzano FCJ College has been a part of Friday Night School, with our girls and other Melbourne school students, helping hundreds of families.

On most Fridays, up to 200 student tutors attend to teach up to 200 younger children. Many tutors have regulars they teach each week and schools have a waiting list of students who want to help out.

The Friday Night School program was recently featured on ABC’s Lateline, on Wednesday 6 April 2016.

One of the Genazzano student tutors, Isabelle Zupan, was featured in the program, as she has been helping Reyana Geberesadike with her maths each week.

“I’ve been coming here for a year and a half and I initially worked on my maths because I’m not really good at that,” Reyana said.

Isabelle says their hard work together is starting to pay off.

“I come because I like doing community service. I find it’s really, really rewarding and also because Reyana is my regular I come because I can’t let her down,” she said.

“She’s improved so much with doing times tables. Last year we were doing addition and subtraction.

“It’s so rewarding to see Reyana grow up and become such a great young woman.”

Watch the full Lateline segment here.