Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations

The Australian Youth Representative for the UN travelled around and went to Youth Street in Townsville. This is what she had to say about it.

YOUTH STREET

On Saturday night, I went to Youth Street, which is a community development project aimed at reaching young people, with 4 community centres – Townsville, Newcastle, Mount Isa and Perth. Youth Street is an initiative of Youth With A Mission, which is an international Christian organisation.

Seeing Youth Street in operation is truly phenomenal. It was without doubt the most packed out place I’d seen in all my travels, with dozens and dozens of young people using the skate ramps that surrounded the building before coming inside for bands, short films and hanging out.

Service delivery for young people is so tricky and the number of youth centres and PCYC’s that I’ve seen around the country that aren’t really being utilised by the young population is such a shame, particularly so when a lot of young people in these communities complain there is nothing to do. I think the key is involving young people in the building, development and running of these facilities, which is what Youth Street does.

I was shown around by Fiona Saxby and Ryan Booker, who are both young people in touch with the needs of the community they were servicing, and were involving young people in lots of team-building, fun activities and good old fashioned entertainment, using ideas like Skate Teams as ways to foster relationships amongst young people.