Post by Omila Herath

As the year comes to a close, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on my time as President of Monash SEED 🌱. When I stepped into this role, I knew I wanted to take a different approach. Rather than chasing short-term wins, my focus was to lay a strong foundation that would allow the club to grow and adapt as times changed. Along the way, there were plenty of successes, lessons and mistakes, all of which shaped what this year became. When Vivian Zhu and I began our term as President and Vice President, we set ourselves two clear goals: 📈To grow Monash SEED into the largest student-run impact organisation in Australia. 🏠To provide our members with meaningful opportunities within the social impact space and career-wise. We measured growth externally and internally. Externally through engagement with Social Media and internally through community strength and engagement. One goal was reaching 2,000 Instagram followers while maintaining strong engagement. I’m incredibly proud to say that, thanks to the efforts of an amazing team, we surpassed that goal, sitting at 2,145 followers at the time of writing. More importantly, we saw that growth translated into real engagement. Club culture was another major focus for me this year. By increasing support for our internal initiatives, we not only delivered our most successful event to date, Semester Two Games Night, with over 200 sign-ups and 150+ attendees, but we also created a welcoming and supportive environment that was foundational to this year's success. This year also marked a shift in Monash SEED’s philosophy. We moved away from primarily corporate-focused events and leaned more intentionally into initiatives with direct social impact. One of our more meaningful outcomes was our partnership with Feed One Feed All, connecting Monash students with a local charity organisation to provide tangible support. But none of this would have been possible without an incredible team. Thank you to my Vice President and incoming President, Vivian Zhu, for being right there in the thick of everything. To Amy Nguyen and Charlie Leong, who tirelessly kept the club running. To Ingrid Lee and Che Gunatillake who delivered our incredible array of events. To Khue Le, our P&C Director, for completely rethinking how we approach community and connection within the club. To Senithi De Silva, whose work was vital in establishing strong connections. And a special thank you to our Marketing Director, Cindy Mao, whose leadership and relentless drive ensured our initiatives reached the people they were meant to. Finally, to the broader Monash SEED team, thank you for your commitment, effort and belief in what we were building together. This year has been an incredibly meaningful chapter and I truly believe it’s only the beginning of a strong and exciting future for Monash SEED. So grateful for this journey, the people I’ve met and everything I’ve learnt along the way.