By Mikayla van Loon
Giving youth a voice on things that matter to them is what young people from the Yarra Ranges wanted to achieve for this year’s Youth Fest.
Creating an all youth-led video about youth for adults to see and hear was the premise of this project, with the Youth Advisory Group (YAG) conducting all interviews and guiding the filming.
YAG members Matt and Sien said the questions asked of these young people related to what challenges they are facing, what can youth offer the community and what message do they have for adults.
“We wanted to make a video that captured the young people’s voices in the Yarra Ranges and what it’s like to live here,” Matt said.
“Probably the most powerful message or the most powerful answers we got to a question were if we had a message for adults in the arrangers what would it be?”
Matt said the most common answer to that question was young people didn’t feel heard by adults when attempting to share an opinion or thoughts on something affecting them.
“They may not look like they’re actively listening to an adult who’s communicating to them, but they are and they’re passionate about the same or similar topics to what adults are,” he said.
“It’s just when they go to express it, they feel like their opinion is brushed off and not listened to deeply.”
Sien said with a lot of the questions being asked of the young people, it was as though they had answers prepared.
“I feel like it was something they’ve been wanting to say for a long time and now they’ve been given the platform and the opportunity to say it,” they said.
“It really showed there is a need for more youth voice in places where it can really make a change.”
Trying to reach people from across the shire, members from YAG shared their views, as well as young people from Oonah Belonging Place and the Lilydale Youth Hub.
“We ended up getting a little bit of diversity, not as much as we would have liked to but still, everyone we interviewed represents something else and they’re diverse in their own unique ways,” Matt said.
While reaching different age groups, locations and genders, two key challenges arose – mental health and public transport access.
Receiving the same answers, particularly about the challenges, Sien said meant the work YAG and the Youth Team have been doing is following the right track.
“It’s also a bit of reassurance that we are advocating for the right things because I would hate to advocate for public transport to find out young people are like ‘why? It’s fine’,” they said.
“It’s a good thing that they agree that it needs to be improved. Same with mental health systems.”
Yarra Ranges Youth received funding from the State government for Youth Fest in 2020 which helped bring this video to life, supported by filmmaker Patrick.
The video was launched on social media, YouTube and on the council’s website on Wednesday 14 September.
Now that it’s out in the world, Sien and Matt said they hope it will be heard by all and that it can start to change the conversation about youth involvement in some of the major issues facing the Yarra Ranges.
“I’m personally hoping that people will start to understand that youth and young people have a lot to say and a lot of input to make that is important,” Sien said.
“It’s not just them complaining about how things are but they’re actually wanting to make change and wanting change to happen and just how beneficial that change can be.
“Young people are the future, as they say, so let us have a voice in what our future will be.”
