BOOKS TO HELP YOU BLOOM

Blossom Friendship

By Tasha Broomhall

Tasha interviewed Tess and Locket of Blossom Friendship who met while studying law at Murdoch University. Tess currently works at the Department of Finance as a graduate, while Locket works at Landgate as a legal research officer graduate.

TB: Tell me about Blossom Friendship and how it started. TESS: Locket and I both went to Murdoch Uni and we decided that we wanted to get involved with a number of different competitions. So, the first one we entered was the Young Gemstar Entrepreneurial Competition. This competition was looking at workshopping different kinds of social initiatives. So we really thought, what can we do to improve the world? We focused in on how people at university really struggled to form friendships and make connections with other people and especially we found that this was to do with people that have disabilities. Originally our idea was really focused on this particular group of people, but then we did focus in more on other people that also go to Uni and also, because different to school, you're not sitting here in a class together with the same people every single day. So it's a lot harder to make friendships. LOCKET: We were also inspired by people in our lives. Tess was inspired by her sister who has ADHD and I was inspired by one of my best friends who also has ADHD. Both just really wanted and were lacking genuine friendships. That's something that we wanted to help them with. The competition was really good in how there was workshops that provided support and mentorship and really helped us to shape our idea. We came in the top three, which was really awesome. So even though we didn't win number one that's okay, because we have more knowledge. We were still, like, super passionate about Blossom Friendship, so we took that on to our next competition. TESS: We entered Think Big. It's run by the Big Idea magazine. We continued on with the same sort of idea. We got a lot more mentorship along the way. A number of people at Murdoch Uni really helped with that. We finished semifinalists. Then last year, our last year of Uni, we decided to put in an application for this program that Murdoch runs, it's called Students as Change Agents in Learning and Teaching… SCALT for short. We entered this and got a spot. So again, the Uni actually provides a bit of funding and they want to be able to make your ideas, I guess, become a bit of a reality. Our last year of Uni, we focused in on how can we actually make Blossom Friendship a reality. With the competitions, it was always just a bit of an idea, but it had never actually come about. Last year we held a couple of different events at Uni and really focused on getting a lot of different people to come along, the real key focus being around friendships and connections. We really wanted to get a diverse group of people to attend. LOCKET: We're really thankful for Murdoch University in providing the support and the funding. The events that we hosted were super successful, the first event that we hosted had about 100 students, which was an awesome turnout. The second event, unfortunately, the theme was Spring, but on the day just, oh, the weather was shocking! It was raining so it was last minute running around, getting a marquee which luckily all worked out, but it definitely threw a wrench into the works. But the activities that we had at those events were super fun. We had painting on pot plants and they got to bring home their painted pot plant with a cute little succulent inside, which was very nice. And then other activities such as board games, online games which were from Jackbox games, and just lots of bits and bobs for free for people to really connect and form those friendships. TESS: Our activities, we wanted to make sure people