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Discover your future

Emerson Chesterfield Left Ellie Sutton Right

Connecting school students to a more diverse view of career pathways is the focus of a group of Broken Hill High students who participated in ABC Heywire’s Youth ideas summit earlier this year. Emerson Chesterfield and Ellie Sutton who are now working with Country University Centre (CUC) say that it has been a positive experience to watch their ideas develop and grow in front of them.

The CUC received a $7,269 from the FRRR on behalf of the Heywire group “Discover your Future”. The CUC are now working with four group members to realise their idea for a program that will enable students to find ways to connect with a range of career ideas, including those that have navigated more complex answers to the often daunting and simplified question of “what career should I do?”

Ms Sutton said that it was great that the CUC showed interest in their group and thinks “they are a perfect fit for our idea”.

Ms Chesterfield that the program they are developing is about trying to help young people understand their choices and get a sense of the options available both in Broken Hill and further afield.

“It’s been great working outside the school and education system, where ideas like this can sometimes get a bit lost, to have an outside perspective like Heywire and then CUC to help us push and develop the idea where we want it to go.”

Education and Programs Coordinator at CUC Sarah Rolton said that “Broken Hill school students are participating in higher education at much lower rates than their peers, so we are trying to have more contact with the youth to help build aspirations for them as they leave school.”

“The ABC Heywire summit event was a fantastic way to value the voices of our young people and the FRR grants were an opportunity to take their ideas and help them bring them to life. It is really important that they feel valued in our community.”

Ms Chesterfield said that the team at “Discover your Future” was working, to include a range of careers in the planning of the event that would benefit current and future peer’s access to information of career pathways.

“There is so much to fit in, standard careers but also ones that are a bit more on the outside, ones that are harder to find or that you wouldn’t really know about.” The group says that the process of developing and working on a project like this has helped them see the importance of young people getting involved in community shaping projects, and that it has shown them how they can work to address issues they see firsthand.

The first event and showcase of the group’s work will be help on 30th March 2022 at the civic centre and is currently seeking industry professionals, entrepreneurs and creatives to share their time in productive discourse and activities at the event.

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