Year 9 Service Week

On the second day of our Year 9 experience of Service Week, we travelled to Melbourne’s CBD. When we arrived at school we all piled onto the buses, when we reached the city we were dropped off in our groups and set off for the day. The group I was a part of and learned about was the Salvation Army.

We were greeted by our Salvation Army representative and started our journey. We learnt about the number of people who have been or still dealing with homelessness and what hostile architecture was before we went on a brief walk around the city looking for examples of these environments. We were able to spot a variety of different types of hostile architecture within 5 minutes of our stroll.

Shortly after our walk we all stopped in a park and learned about the struggles of someone who used the Salvation Army while homeless. Brian was a man who had experienced homelessness and reached out to the Salvation Army, and who had gained a disability from this chapter. We understood and were able to recognise what it feels like to become homeless.

Subsequently, we went back to the Salvation Army building on Collins Street and went into a classroom. In the room, we learned about the percentage breakdown of what homeless can look like.

To put out knowledge to use we were given whiteboards with small scenarios on them and had to expand on the character's behaviours with the prompt ‘But why?’

Written by Gabby Cardona

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