Putting poverty in perspective

Earlier this week Year 10 students at James Sheahan Catholic High School were visited by UN Youth NSW, which is an educational organisation that aims to expand student learning about world issues, social justice, international diplomacy and advocacy.

Next term students will be focusing on human wellbeing, so the visit from UN Youth NSW focused particularly on ‘Poverty, Aid and Development.’

Students completed different workshops and discussions to help them better understand the topic and what it means to them, our country and other countries also.

UN Youth NSW, Facilitator, Sina Aghamofid explained, “We realise that a lot of them associate poverty with developing nations, so we gave them the realisation that actually three million Australians live in poverty right now, and that’s 12.5% of the population, I think that puts it in perspective for a lot of the students.

Logan Andrews

“What I hope they get out of the session is a broader understanding of the world and expanding their horizons and perspectives, just to look at the world a little bit differently and hope that one day maybe they can be the change that makes things a little bit better.”

Year 10 student, Logan Andrews said, “We’ve been discussing the different elements on how Countries can aid others and are not, we are also discussing the effects of poverty, and that mental health can be a big one, especially in Australia.”

“From this workshop I’ve learnt that when someone is in poverty there are so many things that can contribute to that and make it either better or worse, not everyone’s situation is the same and you have to consider that when you try to help someone.

Also realising, that as much as it’s not easy to get back onto your feet Australia has a lot of options for people to help themselves as much as they can.”