The Centre for Multicultural Youth is a not-for-profit organisation based in Victoria, providing specialist knowledge and support to young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds.
Duré de Winter Program Manager – Youth Leadership
The Youth Leadership Program Area at CMY has evolved over a period of 10 years. It uses an experiential learning process which provides a platform for multicultural youth to:
CMY uses a recruitment and induction process to get young volunteers involved across multiple programs. It considers the interest of the young people and takes various approaches to participation. Hence, programs at CMY are either youth informed, or youth-led or have been co-designed with young people.
As a result, volunteers can have various responsibilities based on the degree of participation:
Quote from a young person – “Participation has made me more confident in going out there and owning my story and sharing it with the world”
CMY recognises that society places several barriers on multicultural young people that prevents meaningful access and information to services. Culturally responsive service responses are needed for issues such as:
Quote from a young person – “I’ve made amazing personal connections with fellow mental health advocates, now calling them friends rather than colleagues or participants, so thank you!”
Quote from a young person – “I’ve learned a lot about the youth sector, youth participation, ways to influence policy and programs and issues experienced by migrant and refugee young people.”
CMY has observed positive outcomes across across all their youth leadership programs. The outcomes are classified into four broad areas:
In recent evaluations of CMY programs, young people have reported 80-95% satisfaction in each of these outcome domains.
Quote from a young person – “The biggest impact for me participating in this program was identifying the skills in helping clients from migrant backgrounds and giving them clarity on how to solve their issues in their families and communities”
To access a downloadable version of the study, click here.
To know more about the program, contact – Duré de Winter at ddewinter@cmy.net.au.
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