Hi Youthgassers!
Please find below the speech I delivered on Poverty and Disadvantage in Australia and the world, for the UN's Commemoration of the Oct 17 International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. This speech was delivered alongside UNICEF, a representative of the Secretary-General and Fourth World at UN Headquarters in New York.
Like my official statement to the UN General Assembly, this speech was informed by a 5 month youth consultation tour I led alongside the United Nations Youth Association of Australia (UNYA). The speech refers predominantly to marginalised youth in our community and cites participation as a key solution to some young people's sense of hopelessness. It also discusses extreme poverty in Indigenous communities and the outstanding leadership young Australians are giving to social justice campaigns against relative and extreme poverty.
Thank you again to those groups within the sector who I worked closely with on my tour. I am looking forward to getting involved in the sector again for my Report Back Tour, where I would love to add value to different projects with my experiences and learning at the UN.
Thanks again for your support and looking forward to working with you.
Chris
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Testimony delivered for the UN’s Commemoration of October 17 International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (on behalf of young Australians)
Excellencies, ladies & gentlemen,
To give a face to this International Day Against Poverty, I thought I would begin by sharing a firsthand experience of a young Australian named Adam, who told his story of relative poverty in a letter addressed to Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
“My name is Adam, I'm 20 years old from QLD. My Dad and older brother are in gaol. As a kid I never came home to food on the table, and my childhood was full of violence and abuse. When I was a teenager I was on every type of drug and ended up in juvenile detention for various crimes. Afterwards I came to a homeless shelter in Sydney run by the Salvation Army. As I write this, I am 5 days clean. With the Salvation Army, I am learning stuff every day and now want to become a qualified youth worker so I can help ‘lost’ kids find hope again and in doing so, make myself better. Thanks Kevin Rudd for reading, I will send you an update on my progress soon.”
Adam’s story is one I heard during my tour throughout Australia with our UN Youth Association to listen and engage the perspectives of young Australians for my work here as their Youth Representative. On my travels I many met young people like Adam who were marginalised because of poverty or socio-economic disadvantage and promised them that I would bring the sum of their voices to these halls.
If we look at Adam’s background, we gain an insight into a dysfunctional family that was caught within a cycle of relative poverty and hopelessness, and relied on violence, drugs and stealing as coping mechanisms. As a result Adam very much had a broken spirit before he came to the Sydney homeless shelter.
Inherent within the Convention on the Rights of the Child is a belief that every child deserves a win of some kind in childhood, a moment of confidence and empowerment where they envision their future potential. This win might be having a supportive teacher at school or placing well in a competition. As we see with Adam’s childhood, poverty prevents children attaining these moments. And yet his experience also reveals the empowerment children and young people feel when valued by community and encouraged to transform their world from hopelessness to hope. This was my greatest privilege to witness whilst visiting different homeless shelters and juvenile detention centres.
Adam’s story is not unique to Australia alone. Every society has a prison of poverty within it. And today’s young people hold the key to overcoming it if we engage and invest in them enough as equal partners.
I am proud to say that youth leadership against poverty was a common picture I encountered on my national tour. The group supporting Adam, the Salvation Army, is one of many organisations that has youth volunteers and young workers leading its operations and delivering its outreach programs to disadvantaged young people.
Throughout my tour I also saw profound will from young Australians to end extreme poverty in our lifetime. Over the last 3 weeks I have heard the same message from other Youth Delegates speaking of their youth constituencies.
Looking within Australia, there are many Indigenous Australians who live in extreme poverty. However I am proud to say that our Government’s Apology to our Indigenous people has lifted the whole spirit of my country and better positioned us to see our Indigenous people thrive. Young people’s leadership has been critical here. In Matraville, New South Wales I met a young Indigenous girl named Kimberly who helps other Indigenous young people be proud of their cultural identity, develop leadership skills and pursue their education. Kimberly is an example of the determination my generation and all sectors have to realise equality between cultures.
Looking globally, today I also feel honoured to be the mouthpiece of the overwhelming amount of young Australians and young people globally who are making activism on eliminating world poverty and tackling climate change, their life purpose. Last Friday, tens of thousands of young Australians participated in STAND UP to pledge support for the Millennium Development Goals. In August, 300, 000 young people gave up food in a ‘40 Hour Famine’ to raise funds for the Global Food Crisis. And throughout the year young people nation-wide have led an awareness campaign called the “Global Poverty Project” to educate the community on the causes and solutions to global poverty through film.
It is this youth leadership I have seen and heard that convinces me that we will one day walk in a world where all children, regardless of their ethnicity, socio-economic position and gender will live free of extreme poverty, enjoy equal rights and be supported to help shape their communities.
May we walk together through all the challenges that lie ahead to realise that world.
Thank you and thank you to young Australians.
Speech on Poverty 
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