Last Tuesday, Alex Paljetak and I attended a regional student meeting with the Australian Representative to the United Nations, Lucy Stronach. Lucy is currently travelling around Australia on a ‘Listening Tour’, holding youth consultation sessions across the country. Joining us from Year 6 were James, Josie, Martin, Saige, Charlotte, Lucy and Caiden. Below is a summary of what the Youth Representative to the United Nations is all about.
What is the Youth Representative to the United Nations? The Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations travels around Australia on their ‘Listening Tour’ to hold consultations with our diverse youth. These sessions are instrumental to accurately representing Australia’s young people in policy & decision making domestically and abroad. In 2021, Lucy Stronach is our Youth Representative, and she will be travelling around our many states and territories on her Listening Tour to ask our youth: “What would Australia look like if young people were the key drivers of decision making?”. Lucy will then take and present her findings of these consultations to the UN in New York at the end of the year as a member of the Official Australian Delegation to the UN.
At the beginning of the workshop, students were asked about some of the issues, both big and small, that they believed were affecting the world today. Some of the quite mature topics student discussed were gender inequality, pollution, racism, live export and Indigenous rights, just to name a few. Students then broke off into small groups to identify one key issue and provide solutions to help solve it.
Overall, we couldn’t be prouder of the way our students represented St Dominic’s. To discuss and think about key issues affecting the world today showed a great amount of maturity. The future is safe in the hands of our leaders.
Leon Bolding
Principal
Alex Paljetak
Assistant Principal