To Celebrate ‘International Day of the Girl Child’ in October, ten KS4 and KS5 students were invited to the US Embassy. The students took part in a Q&A session with the US Ambassador and two senior members of staff at the US Embassy. This is the second occasion that La Retraite students have had the opportunity to meet with the US Ambassador and we hope to maintain a special relationship with Ambassador Jane Hartley. Tsion (Year 12) has written an extract about our visit:

"5th of October, I was blessed enough to visit the US Embassy with other La Retraite students, and in a panel event, we listened to some women - highly experienced in the world of work- respond to questions from young female students, including myself. Questions varied from being politics-based to being centred around culture. One of the things that was spoken about that that really got me was the power of education for lifting people out of poverty; this was mentioned by Shiva Marvasti. I find this quite interesting because she had also spoken about moving to the US from Iran (a place where she would have struggled as a woman to become highly educated) in her pursuit of education. She was a teenager whilst she was making move, which I think really shows just how important she’s viewed education. It’s something that can be used to really change someone’s life, breaking poverty cycles and giving people the chance to improve themselves, including women’.

It was a great opportunity for students, and they were able to take away from the event an arrangement of knowledge based on life experiences.