SWAN Hill Specialist School (SHSS) students are demonstrating that they can be driving forces for change through the Rural Youth Ambassadors Rural Inspire program.
“I will be remembered as the ambassador of people that need special placements in school, and also the ambassador of a well-needed basketball court upgrade,” SHSS student Lachie Roberts said.
National project officer of rural youth aspirations Joe Collins said the Rural Youth Ambassadors program, which started in 2012 as an initiative of Country Education Partnership (CEP), involves bringing rural and remote young people from across the state together to be ambassadors for themselves and their peers.
“It is about them being ambassadors in the sense that they come together to work through the good things and the bad things and then present the solutions to the issues that they face as young people within their communities and the state back to those that can make a difference,” Mr Collins said.
As the Rural Youth Ambassadors program grew, another initiative was developed by CEP called Rural Inspire.
“Rural Inspire, which was started by the youth ambassadors, is an initiative about inspiring rural and remote young people, because every rural and remote young person deserves to have aspirations and inspirations,” Mr Collins said.
This year, specialist school students from Swan Hill, Echuca, Bendigo and Maryborough have taken part in a pilot localised model of Rural Inspire following the same guidelines as their mainstream peers.
As part of the program, the students came to together to speak with the regional and area directors about what improvements they would like to see, strategies to improve those things, and legacies they would like to leave behind as a part of the program.
“You can be a leader even if you don’t have a badge,” one student said.
“We are the future and the voice for those who don’t have a voice,” another said.
SHSS principal Jodi Walters said it is an amazing program for any student, and a particularly exciting one for her students.
“Excitingly for us, the changes they wanted weren’t for themselves but were for their peers. So I think that is the massive difference between our kids and many other students,” Ms Walters said.
She also believes students from other schools in the program will benefit greatly from hearing from students with a disability.
“It is quite exciting and quite an opportunity for their mainstream peers to learn about the depth of understanding and ability of the students,” Ms Walters said.
While this is just a pilot program, Ms Walters is hopeful it will continue in the future.
“There is no way CEP is going to let this sit,” Ms Walters said.
