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 Brimbank Young Men's Project
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What is the project?
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Program Details
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Project Partners
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Contact
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What is the project?
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The Brimbank Young Men’s Project (BYMP) is a pilot initiative of CMY, which aims to help young men of African backgrounds who are: disengaged (or at high risk of being disengaged) from education, training and employment; have had contact with the police; and are experiencing other difficulties with settlement. The project is based in the Brimbank local government area in Melbourne’s north-west, taking in suburbs like Sunshine and Keilor.
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Program Details
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The BYMP comprises outreach, group work, ‘Celebration’ activities, mentoring, and information provision. To date, group work has taken the form of weekly ‘Youthtube’ activities, designed to address the young men’s social isolation and to assist them in building peer and community connections. The program’s first Celebration activity has been a community concert/Big Event, funded by Victoria Police and staged at the Kensington Community Youth Centre with assistance from Brimbank Youth Services.
While it is inevitable that an initiative of this kind will involve some informal counselling exchanges, the BYMP is not a case management program, and has an explicit engagement focus. Where the emphasis of most Government-funded projects of this nature is on finding pathways for young people to employment, training and further education, the BYMP intentionally has a pre-Pathways focus.
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Positive outcomes attained during the BYMP’s short duration include:
| - Participants have reportedly exhibited interest in the activities and have been keen to participate.
- Referrals for case management have received an “instant response”.
- Approximately half the program participants have been referred to service providers and have been able to address pressing needs such as homelessness and legal assistance.
- Seven young men have been reconnected with training providers and educational institutions.
- There has also been interest expressed by some young men in short term courses at either the Ashley Institute or other facilities.
- Three young men have reconnected with families through mediation facilitated by the program staff.
- The BYMP has enjoyed some success in (a) changing the young men’s perceptions of police, and (b) bringing police and the young people together. This has been facilitated – in part - by pro-active policing.
- Tangible outcomes of the Police meeting with the young men have included a concert at Kensington Community Youth Centre.
- Four productive Working group meetings have been held since the Group’s inception and the connections have reached a point where uniformed police can be represented at meetings.
- Program staff also highlighted the goodwill and enthusiasm for the initiative of the participating and associated agencies and services.
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To learn more about the project, download a copy of the evaluation report, produced for CMY by Dr Malcolm Turnbull and Dr Helen Stokes of Melbourne University’s Youth Research Centre.
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 download a copy (1MB)
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Project Partners
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The project is funded by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and draws on multiple partnerships within North-western region youth and welfare sectors, notably the Victoria Police Multicultural Liaison Centre.
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Contact
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For more information on the project, contact:
Girma Seid
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Project Officer - Youth Support and Development
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Tel (03) 9091 8233
Email gseid@cmy.net.au
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