Australia: YACWA congratulates Ben Dancey, on reaching final stage of Youth Worker Award

Australia: Nonprofit and Charity Organisation, Youth Affairs Council of Western Australia extended pleasure and congratulated Ben Dancey. She has reached the final stage of the Outstanding Youth Worker Award Today, October 18, 2023.

The Youth Affairs Council (YACWA) Organisation has been working consistently to uplift the Youth. YACWA remarked on Ben Dancey and underlined her several achievements. The Organisation also highlighted her contributions in pioneering the Home Stretch WA Programme.

Ben Dancey has spent more than 15 years working with Youth in remote Aboriginal Communities and street-present young people. In the past five years, Ben has been pioneering the Home Stretch WA Program,

As per YACWA, the Home Stretch WA Programme was codesigned by young people and is being rolled out as a permanent part of the child protection system. The program supports young people aged 18 to 21,

as they leave out-of-home care and transition into adulthood. Ben was one of the first youth transition coaches and has helped roll out the program throughout the state.

Home Stretch participants receive holistic and practical support such as budgeting, housing access, and life coaching to achieve employment and connect with their identity, culture and community.

Recently, the YACWA also Congratulated the Agents of Climate Change for making it to the final stage of the Youth Focus Sector Collaboration Award.

The Agents of Climate Change is a climate education and action program led by the Millennium Kids Youth Board, which identified the need for more informed processes for climate change education and action.

The program has been designed to meet the curriculum needs of schools and can also be run as a community initiative. A youth team codesigned, trialled and reviewed the program in Mundaring, Mandurah, Karratha and Bunbury.

The US Government now supports the program with program uptake in the Shire of Mundaring and the City of Canning, which ran the program in schools and CALD youth groups.

Recommendations from young people have been tabled in the council’s Climate Change Energy Transformation strategy.