As part of their youth outreach strategy, the Gold Coast City Council engages 120 year 10-11 students from across the Gold Coast to form their Junior Council. This Junior Council reports directly to the city council with ideas, projects and initiatives to engage and support young people on the Gold Coast.
When COVID-19 social distancing restrictions were put in place, the Junior Council were all voicing their concerns regarding the negative effects of social distancing on young people.
At this point BOP was engaged to design and facilitate a program for the 120 Junior Councilors and the 8 executives to prepare them for the future of work, and give them the skills to support youth in their local community throughout COVID- 19.
Within 24 hours of being engaged we had created and launched an online platform for the students to communicate and share resources and ideas and 48 hours after that we ran
our first 'Social Isolation Hackathon' with the students. By the end of the program the students had developed a suite of 21st century skills, connected with other opportunities to continue developing their skills and had developed over 20 high quality initiatives to support youth through these uncertain times with the executive team pitching the top ideas to the Gold Coast Mayor, Tom Tate. Their pitches were definitely a highlight of the hackathon.
"I am filled with gratitude for BOP in organising the meeting yesterday. I was so proud of the students and how confident they were. The facilitators were such a pleasure to work with as well... nothing is ever a problem for the team, what a great culture they are creating." Kerry Kable, Youth Officer, City of Gold Coast
Since running this program we've taken similar online deliver techniques and applied them to our workshops, see our School Programs for more information.