ROdown Blog

Let's put young people in charge

This week I spent three days getting inspired at the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition’s national youth affairs conference in Sydney. The conference brought young people together with youth workers and leaders from around the country, and it was a great space to chat about the ways we could work with youth workers to help young people to be supported, respected and valued. We even got the chance to mingle with some awesome and inspirational people like Matthew Mitcham - the Olympic Gold winning Australian diver who came out as gay just before the 2008 Summer Olympics.

But you know what was most awesome? All of the amazing things that people are already doing to make space for us to take charge of our lives and our country.

3 Things - Oxfam
One of the amazing sessions was presented by Oxfam, who talked about their 3 Things campaign - which encourages people to think about the small things they can do every day to change the world for the better. The cool thing about this campaign is that instead of trying to make change on one issue, it tries to move people to a mindset of "I don't like it, I can change it" - the key being to teach people how to create change, as a skill, rather than just recruiting them to Oxfam’s campaigns. They reckon that if we want the idea that anyone can create change to go viral, we need to use and profile everyone's stories - and support individual people to take action on the things they care about in their own way. I encourage everyone to check it out via the link at the bottom of the article.

Jan Owen, Foundation for Young Australians
I ended up coming out of this conference with a massive crush on Jan Owen, who is the head of the Foundation for Young Australians. She gave a really inspiring talk, where she talked about the huge personal and global challenges that we’re going to have to face, but which she really believes we have the potential to tackle. Because she and others believe in the potential young people have so much, they have set up the Foundation, which provides funding, training and research to support young people to design and lead projects in their communities.

Samah Hadid, 2010 Australian Youth Ambassador to the UN
Last, but not least, I had the pleasure to hear Samah Hadid talk, who was picked to be our country’s youth ambassador to the UN in 2010. As a part of her role, she did a 5 month road trip around Australia to talk to young people in a rural, indigenous, city and other communities. Samah gave an inspirational speech to the UN at the end of it all, where she showed first hand the amazing potential that we young people have to envision a greater future than the one we are given. You can check out her speech via the link at the bottom of this post.

I came out of this conference inspired and motivated to believe that I have the support and potential to make change on the issues that really matter to me. I now know that I am surrounded by people who are willing to help me get there - if I am willing to reach out.

Article links

Australian Youth Affairs Coalition: http://www.ayac.org.au/

Foundation for Young Australians: http://www.fya.org.au/

Matthew Mitcham (Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Mitcham

Oxfam - 3 Things: http://3things.org.au/

Samah Hadid - Speech to the U.N.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFOlrnFgAT0