Our Minds Our World
Our Minds Our World
During the first semester of the year, 16 year 8 and 9 students were selected to be a part of a project lead by the Whittlesea Youth Commitment in conjunction with the Department of Justice. During the course of the project, the students participated in 2 hour, weekly workshops which focussed on issues the youth of today are facing, such as domestic violence, safety within the community, mental health and drugs and alcohol. What made this project particularly unique was that during most of the workshops, not only were external agencies involved, such as Baseline and Storyscape, but youth resource officers, Wendy and Shannon, from Epping police worked very closely with the students and were able to build strong relationships, breaking down the perceptions and ‘fears’ that are often felt when young people are around police officers.
At the end of the workshops, students spent two whole days leading, creating and producing music, dance and a short film which reflected their ideas and thoughts on mental health amongst youth. The film was launched at the UniHill Conference centre in June where the students presented the film and participated in a question and answer session to 120 students from 8 local schools. To this day, our students are still being invited to local events to share their film and experiences from the project. The connections, growth, maturity and skills they developed and shared during this project cannot be measured and we are extremely proud of the outcome. If you would like to view the film, grab yourself a box of tissues and use the link below.
