Youth Forum 2010

• Published on 17/08/2010

Youth Forum 2010

On Friday, 6 August, Amnesty NSW hosted a Youth Forum in Sydney. Around 70 students from across the country made the journey to Surry Hills to engage with other young people and to take new ideas back to Amnesty action groups throughout NSW.

The students attended a number of workshops throughout the day. Each covered how to utilise new forms of media to promote human rights and how to put ideas into action through community campaigning. Here participants learnt how to make a story ‘newsworthy’, engage with talk back radio and how to successfully conduct at elevating conversation with the public.

A third workshop looked at creative campaigning, and how this can be used as an innovative tool to promote Amnesty’s role to new audiences. Run by filmmaker Jed Stedman, this workshop encouraged students to think beyond traditional campaigning mediums, with Stedman’s new film used as a shining example of a creative campaigning method.

Other guest speakers throughout the day included the Inspire Foundation’s Matt O’Connor, the Street University’s L-FRESH, Get Up’s Tom Swann and Oaktree’s Samara Barchet. Each shared their experiences of activism and inspired the attendees to continue taking action against injustice and abuses of human rights.

Overall the conference was a great success and we hope that all the students involved felt that they learnt some valuable about engaging with the protection of human rights and the purpose of Amnesty International.

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