In our first meeting, we asked our fellow Prefects, “What makes Ivanhoe Girls, Ivanhoe Girls?” Unanimously, they answered: “the community and connections.”

As the 2025 Prefect team, it is our mission to enrich this school and enhance all that is good about it - so connectedness became our ethos, and our driving purpose: to cultivate connection and community.

However, we quickly realised the enormous scope of our message; connection can form and manifest in so many ways… how were we going to encompass our whole ethos in a single motto? The answer: we weren’t. One phrase simply wasn’t enough to communicate our ambitions and plans to our school - we needed something broader. We needed a theme.

This theme, after little deliberation and much agreement, was Lego. At first, the idea was met with understandable scrutiny. “Lego? A child’s toy? How is this relevant to the professional environment that is Ivanhoe Girls’?” But we asked our community to hear us out. And they did, patiently and kindly, while we explained.

To us, Lego is not just a plastic toy - it’s a metaphor. One for the strength and success that can be found in connection. Just as small Lego blocks can be joined to create formidable structures, people can come together and work to create amazing things.

To manifest our message as tangible change, we created term focuses - quarterly milestones on a year-long roadmap to a connected school environment. Each term highlights a different aspect of our theme.

In Term 1, our focus was self: reminding the school how important it is to look after oneself before looking to others, because strong structures are only possible when the building blocks themselves are strong.

In Term 2, our focus is others: encouraging the school to build connections with the community around them. Like building your Lego house, coming together with those closest to you creates strength.

In Term 3, our focus is the world. As a privileged school, we’re not only able, but obliged to harness our combined strength to make a positive impact beyond our community. This is like connecting our Lego house with others around the world, forming a diverse and united Lego city.

We haven’t got long as a Prefect team to make lasting change. But if there’s one thing we hope to leave behind, (our “Lego-cy,” if you will) it’s a renewed appreciation and drive for connection in every member of Ivanhoe Girls. A community that cares for themselves, one another, and the world beyond.

Jemima, School Captain and Giovanna, School Vice Captain