Positive change starts with you!
Our Youth Leadership programs offer a range of opportunities for young people to get involved, connect with others, learn and develop skills, have your voices heard, and create positive change in your lives and communities.
We believe:
- Anyone who takes any action to create positive change is practicing leadership
- There are many ways of practicing leadership – from every day actions to large-scale movements
- Leadership can be formal and informal – you don’t have to hold a formal position of leadership to have positive influence.
We also offer workshops for schools, download this flyer for more information.
From FREE training workshops, to youth-led projects, to sports programs – check out the range of opportunities below to find one for you.
Western Young People’s Independent Network (WYPIN) – now recruiting
WYPIN is a youth-led group based in Melbourne’s west, working to develop programs that will benefit multicultural young people.
The network engages young people each year in a variety of programs that focus on capacity building, empowerment, engagement, advocacy and challenging racism in the community.
Speak Up – now recruiting
Speak Up contributes to CMY’s strategic objective that young people are understood, accurately represented and influential in Australian society.
Speak Up is a primary and early intervention project designed to promote gender equity among multicultural young people in Victoria.
With meaningful youth participation at the heart of this project, Speak Up will provide a platform for inclusion of young people’s perspectives and solutions, through supporting them to mobilise and contribute to gender equity and violence prevention amongst peers and the broader community. The project will be delivered in metropolitan Melbourne and the regional area of Ballarat.
ENVISION
A program supporting newly-arrived young people to learn more about life in Australia, make new friends, connect to local support services and build leadership skills.
* Currently recruiting Peer Facilitators for 2022.
Aspire to Lead
A strengths-based leadership program available to schools in the City of Casey and Cardinia Shire. The program is designed for students who may experience challenges engaging with the school and the education environment. The program consists of workshops, group peer-mentoring sessions and events hosted by participants.
The program is run weekly for 10 weeks (during one term), and designed to be repeated with the support of previous participants as peer mentors.
CMY will collaborate with each school to either connect this program to existing and on-going programs within the school, or to implement it as a stand-alone program.
This program is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services.
For more information, contact:
Engela van der Klashorst | Project Officer
E | evanderklashorst@cmy.net.au
M | 0436 620 187
Communities Standing Up to Racism
Communities Standing Up to Racism (CSUTR) is a project designed to apply a new whole-of-community approach to anti-racism, inclusive of First Nations and people from migrant or refugee backgrounds. This is a multi-site based project offering workshops and events for schools, sports clubs and community organisations.
Explore
EXPLORE provides an opportunity for young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds to have direct input into the research that impacts their lives. The project supports a partnership between young people and researchers in order to enhance the relevance and responsiveness of research (and post-research interventions) to young people.
Find out more.
Lead Yourself, Lead Others
A project by multicultural young women, for multicultural young women, which explores the intersection of racism, discrimination and gender in the creation of barriers to leadership.
Find out more.
Mental Health Literacy Project
CMY are running a Mental Health Literacy project in partnership with Orygen Youth Mental Health. The aim of the project is to design and develop, in partnership with young people and broader community, a range of resources to improve mental health literacy of young people and their families from Arabic, Vietnamese, Karen, South Sudanese and Pasifika backgrounds in the North West Melbourne area.
Find out more.
Positive Change Makers
Youth leadership training for all experience levels, including 10 modules that use experiential learning to explore leadership with young people.
Find out more.
REVERB
Delivered in 2020-21, Reverb was a co-designed program delivered with young people from multicultural backgrounds, amplifying their voices and lived experiences to add depth and fresh perspectives to conversations about mental health.
Find out more.
Seat at the Table
CMY recognises the enormous leadership experience and potential in the young women we work with. However, while people from refugee and migrant backgrounds make up almost half of all university graduates, the Human Rights Commission reports that only 5% of these graduates will eventually be appointed to leadership roles in Australia.
Seat at the Table (SAT) will provide an exciting leadership opportunity for young women from refugee and migrant backgrounds. The program will feature a 10-month Leadership Immersion Program to address the under-representation of young women from refugee and migrant backgrounds in leadership roles, which includes an Observership Placement and a
facilitated training program. Find out more.
Shout Out
An innovative public speakers agency supporting young people to share their stories and perspectives with a wide range of audiences and help shift public discourse.
Our speakers have been trained and supported to deliver fresh, engaging and thought provoking perspectives as keynote speakers, panel members or emcees for a range of settings across Victoria.
Welcome Football
Using the world game soccer to support newly-arrived families in the City of Hume, to build connections with their local community and develop leadership skills.
Find out more.
Welcome Sports
Welcome Sports connects young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds, who live within Hume, Melton and Sunshine with sport opportunities through a tiered approach:
Tier 1: Running sports clinics in schools and a school holiday program
Tier 2: Giving young people the opportunity to join local sporting clubs
Tier 3: Involving young people in sports careers through refereeing, coaching, admin
CMY partners with local schools in the North West to ensure young people have access to inclusionary space to increase social connections, their physical activity and link them to supports and services.
For more info, contact:
Jay Panchal | Project Officer – Sports & Recreation
E | jpanchal@cmy.net.au
Women’s Sports Hubs
The Women’s Sports Hubs provides opportunities for young women in Melbourne’s South East region to participate in various sports and build connections.
Find out more.
Youth Advisory Group
An opportunity for young people to build their advisory and advocacy skills and influence the work of CMY.
Young Initiators Program
Leadership is not a position or a title, it is action and example
The 2021-2022 Young Initiator Program engages young people from Melbourne’s South East. We explore leadership, values, culture, community and active citizenship through a range of experiential activities, while supporting young people design and deliver impactful initiatives that reshape their communities.
Youth-Led Unit
Adopting a co-design process, and over a 6-month period, CMY will support a team of young people to conceptualise and design a youth-led unit that is integrated within CMY.
Find out more.
Youth Transitions Support
Youth Transitions Support uses sport to engage newly-arrived young people in the City of Hume, and provide support in education, employment and training within the sporting industry.
Find out more.