Young people have always been at the forefront of social change – be it anti-apartheid, civil rights, or abolishing slavery – young people have always been the shamelessly idealistic agitators who have stood up and said it doesn’t have to be this way.
Young people aren’t just the leaders of tomorrow – they must be the leaders of today. Few others have the energy, ideas, passion and audacity to stand up and say “you know what – we can end poverty.”
That’s why giving young people the opportunities, skills, ideas, knowledge, passion and dedication necessary to create lasting change and unleash their potential as changemakers is at the core of what Oaktree does.
We achieve this most systematically through our programs, where we deliberately invest in a number of key areas, and expose participants to experiences and knowledge that will set them up as real leaders.
Our Model
We fundamentally believe that people learn best by doing – and so at the core of our educational philosophy is experiential development. We get our program participants out in the real world doing stuff straight away. We teach a philosophy of ‘fail quickly’ where failure is simply another learning experience, to help us all take our work to the next level. In all of our programs we focus our work in three key areas:
- Knowledge: We focus on creating people who are informed and confident in their knowledge about issues of aid, development, poverty and other global issues.
- Self Awareness & Soft Skills: We make sure our people seek first to know themselves before others, and teach everything from personal leadership to teamwork, emotional intelligence to resilience.
- Practical Skills: We set our people up with a toolbox of practical skills that can be applied any almost any situation. From project management to advanced communication techniques, media engagement to pitching & sales.
Over 50 schools around Australia are currently participating in our innovative Schools 4 Schools program, which see’s real relationships being created between Australians schools and schools in the developing world. Every week students passionate about social justice come together in their school, and are met by one of Oaktree’s trained mentors. The mentor facilitates a program of training, education and action in line with our education model above – leaving students with everything they need to achieve really significant things for their partner school in either South Africa or Cambodia.
In 2011 we’ll be accepting 300 passionate and dedicated uni-aged young people into our entry level volunteering program. Generate is an 8 month long training program that introduces passionate young people to the skills, experiences and knowledge they need to create significant change. We run one program in every state, with program sizes varying between 30 and 50. In each location participants meet weekly for a two hour training session (on topics in line with our educational model above), and then spend time during their weeks putting their new skills into practice by working in teams and individually to run events, campaigns, start initiatives, engage with corporates or media, lobby politicians or more.
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