I work in a pretty challenging field
where you're seeing constantly the the
negative attention that youth crime
draws, the perception that people have
about African young people, the
stereotypes that exist. And then you see
that in how young people present and how
young people show up. It changes the way
that they look at their future. So my
research looks at risk and protective
factors for African youth crime here in
Victoria. How I do that is by making
sure that we identify the challenges
that African Australian young people are
facing, looking at pathways or strengths
that can help them move away from
offending. The goal is that we can use
the research and and the data to drive
meaningful outcomes at a grassroots
level. The things that I'm trying to do
to put that into practice is helping
young people connect to Australian
society. mentoring uh kids from my own
community one-on-one, uh running uh
sports programs, building community
programs as well, and just making sure
that I'm showing up for uh the people in
my community, the people in my life. I
co-founded a soccer and basketball club
for at risk uh African-Australian young
people. The reason why I use sports-based
mentoring programs is it has the the
potential to unite, the potential to
remove barriers that exist between
people. feel like there's so much value
in shared experience in places like
football clubs and sports clubs. You can
build shared experiences. For me, what
I'm most motivated about is helping
young people from my own community see
that here in Australia, they can build a
future for themselves. Sometimes you can
see a really bright young person who is
so capable but doesn't believe that for
themselves. But when given a reason to
hope, when given an alternative, they
can turn their life around.
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