Year 10 News

Fundraising to Help Prevent Youth Homelessness

When Ella, Courtney, Eve, Isabella, Mia and Sarah contacted Kids Under Cover about a fundraising idea, we were humbled by their enthusiasm, maturity and genuine desire to do something to help prevent youth homelessness.

The group, all year 11 students from Melbourne Girls' College, joined YMCA’s Youth for Causes program to learn about social entrepreneurship, community leadership and environmental responsibility. The program provided the funding, training and mentorship to create a social enterprise. Who they chose to support with the funds raised was entirely up to them.

“Seeing someone your own age homeless is really upsetting so we wanted to support the prevention of youth homelessness. We really wanted to get behind something we find close to our hearts and have a real passion for, so choosing Kids Under Cover was easy” says Ella.

Having decided on the charity, they then needed a great product. “After some consideration and advice from our mentor we came up with the idea of creating lip balms that were vegan, cruelty-free, handmade and completely natural, so ‘Sheltered Lip Balms’ were born,” explains Ella.

The lip balms were an overnight success. “There was huge demand from Facebook that we didn’t expect -we sold a lot very quickly.”

Ella credits their success to their passion for the cause and the product, “and we had really great people supporting us too.”

With the lip balms selling out, the group raised $4,680, but more importantly helped raise awareness of the issue of youth homelessness.

“We are all incredibly proud of what we achieved and feel really invested in the product we created. We can’t wait to see how far we can take the project so will definitely be picking it up again once our exams are over,” said Ella.

We are overwhelmed by the group’s commitment and thank all six students for choosing to support our work. In a community where so many young Australians are at risk of or are already homeless, it’s inspiring to see young people work together as young leaders to make a real difference.