So at La Trobe I’ve been fortunate enough to, ah, have a lot of opportunities for extracurricular activities outside of my studies. Um, one of the things that I got to do was, um, was be the event manager with the future students centre, for the next generation youth forum, um, that was held on Friday the 17th of May.
So the Next Generation Youth Forum was a social justice forum, and it was aimed at year 10, 11 and 12 students, um we had 302 students on the La Trobe campus last Friday to attend the event. Um, it turned out day, we had eight speakers, um running workshops throughout the day.
So um, how the day, day went, we started with, just introduce the day. I had a co-host Joanne Tran, and then um our keynote speaker started, and he was Luke Owens who his, he’s a La Trobe student that studies education at the Bendigo campus, and he started a um, a charity called Bendigo for Homeless Youth, um, and he’s raised, in 2012 he raised, over 500,000 dollars for the charity, um, so he talked about that.
And then after that, um we had Jean Madden who started a charity called Street Swags, and they make swags for homeless people, so that they have somewhere to sleep. Um.
And then we had, then we had, morning tea. And after morning tea, um the morning workshops begun, um, so the 8 speakers that we had, um, they did a workshop in the morning and afternoon. The afternoon one was a repeat of the morning, um. Yeah so the speakers that we had were Laura O’Reilly who started a charity called, um, Fighting Chance, and they, they help disabled people um, with employment, and stuff like that. Um, and then Tom Woodroofe who is a, a um, foreign affairs analyst, um and he’s travelled all around the world working with, um, he met Barack Obama, he’s worked with, um, Arnold Schwarzenegger, so he’s a pretty influential guy, inspirational guy, um and then Sam Brahman, who is, a Para Olympian, and he’s been in the Olympics for swimming, um, and he ran a workshop on goal setting.
And then ah, and then we had um, Sebastian Terry, who started a charity called 100 things, and um, he started by writing a bucket list of 100 things that he wanted to achieve. Crazy things like doing the Running of the Bulls, and stuff like that, and um, he started travelling around the world doing them. He started this internet site, and um, people can donate money, um, and he’s raising money for Camp Quality, and he aims to raise $100,000.
Um, yeah but overall it was a really good day, I got, I got a lot of positive feedback from the students that attended. Um, so if you want any more information on the Next Generation Youth Forum, um, you can look it up on the La Trobe website, so it’s www.latrobe.edu.au/next-gen and you can find out all about the event, and um, it’ll, it’ll be on next year.