Challenge Community Services and the Youthie are two local organisations who’ll be benefiting from the latest rounds of funding from the NSW Government’s Youth Opportunities Program, which aims to give more opportunity for marginalised young people to engage with and participate in their communities.
Challenge was given $47,000 for their Voice Of Youth In Care Project, which will provide young people, currently in out-of-home care, the chance to tell their stories by offering podcasting and radio training.
“The program is all about providing an opportunity for young people with out-of-home care experience to use their voice and discuss matters that affect them,” Bradley Burns, Challenge’s Senior Advisor for First Nations, told New England Times.
“The group of participants are young people in or who have been in out-of-home care, and their voice is often left out of discussions and decisions, so this podcast is a way for them to share their voice.”
The program is a first for Challenge.
Part of the funding will be spent on equipment like microphones and audio recorders and formal training, which will include being taught to write for radio, interview techniques, media law, and the mechanics of writing and editing.
Critically, participants will be paid.
“A large portion of the funding will be spent directly on youth participants, who will be reimbursed for the time that they utilise in this program,” Burns said.
“This is to ensure that their expert knowledge is valued and remunerated.”
For Burns, this program is designed to bring some light to the experiences of children in care, and young people have been involved from the start, as a requirement of the grant, and are hoping to use the program as an opportunity to affect change within the system they’re in.
“Young people have been a part of this grant application, and came up with a range of topics to discuss that cover policy, practice and what they wished they had throughout their journey in out-of-home-care.”
“They also have ideas to interview practitioners and utilise this as a space to come together and create change within the system,” Burns said.
For the Youthie, the funds will be going towards their Grub Hub Training Opportunity Café in their Coledale centre, preparing kids for work in the hospitality and restaurant industry.
Haley Fenn, Tamworth Regional Council’s Team Leader for Inclusive Community, said that the $35,000 the Cafe was granted will be spent on course costs, facilitators of the training, as well as equipment and resources for the Café.
“The Grub Hub Training Café will provide young people the opportunity to gain skills in hospitality,” Fenn said, “as well as life skills that can be utilised in their everyday lives.”
The Youthie made sure to involve a “diverse group” of young people from across the region to develop the concept of the café, including young people who spend time at the Youthie, and members of the Tamworth Regional Youth Council.
“This grant will allow young people to have access to training opportunities and learn new skills,
while engaging and interacting with other young people who attend the Youthie.”
The Youth Opportunities Program is designed to centre young, marginalised people in its funding, with an age range from 12 to 24 – those going from dependence on carers, to independence, not just to support these people, but also encourage them to become leaders, and foster connections and networks in the community.
The Program has been run since 2012, and disbursed over $19 million worth of funding for programs.
“The Youth Opportunities program delivers projects by young people for young people,” Minister for Youth Rose Jackson said in a statement.
“From sport to mural making, these new projects will empower and engage young people, helping them connect with their communities and learn vital new skills to set them on a positive path for the future.”
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