Street Universities need help to change young Australian lives

Remember our Families in Distress Foundation? It was co-founded more than 30 years ago by John Embling and Heather Pilcher, whose aim was, in John’s words, to “save kids from homicide or suicide”; to salvage the young lives that were little more than roadkill in an increasingly brutal world.

My job? To raise money neither the state nor federal government would provide. I’d devote a column to a horror story – a 12-year-old prostitute; kids taking heroin spiked with battery acid. There were no emails back then, but letters flooded in and we’d raise about a million dollars and save countless kids. Until Heather died, I wondered if more from exhaustion than cancer, and John became too ill to continue. Then, for me, the torch passed to Matt Noffs, grandson of the late, great humanitarian Ted. Over to him.

Dear Phillip,

Thank you and the magazine for donating this week’s column to my cause. My grandfather Ted Noffs once said: “We are all children of the stars! No human being is a write-off! And after our time, we will all continue our journey through time and space.” He wasn’t religious in the traditional sense but he believed in our “better angels” and that everyone deserved a fair go.

Thirteen years ago, you and your readers helped me open doors to the first Street University – for young Australians who struggle with drug use, mental health issues and involvement in crime – in Sydney’s south west. Today we run seven Street Universities in NSW, ACT and Queensland, with more on the way. Almost like a real university, these centres hold workshops and courses on subjects that these kids want to know about. Not calculus or English Literature but hip hop and app development. The things that are important in their lives. Tens of thousands of young people have learned about themselves and the world around them and have become brighter, happier humans who contribute to our society.

The Street Universities provide counselling and programs to help kids who have grown up with trouble and trauma shadowing them. Most importantly, they work. A recent study by UNSW has shown that the centres significantly reduce issues related to drugs, crime and mental illness. But more than that, they contribute to happier, healthier and more productive lives. For many, it might not have panned out that way. More than half of the young people who walk through the doors are involved with drugs and crime. Without some help, life would likely be bleak.

There’s nothing like an idea whose time has come and we are gaining greater speed now with governments starting to get behind the concept and fund the latest centres. None of this could have happened without the idea first appearing in this column back in 2008. With the readers, and others, expressing belief in the idea, we started the first Street University in 2009.

Today, I call on readers again to believe and help us continue to build Street Universities in places where politicians fear to tread. There are some communities that are in the “too hard basket”, often vilified in the media and given no support to help their young people. But how do we turn criminals and drug dealers into happy, healthy, productive citizens? We give them opportunities! That’s what the Street University is – a centre of opportunity.

We have all the evidence, now we need your help. Your tax deductible contribution (via noffs.org.au) will be life-changing for an Aussie kid – and help make Australia safer for all of us. Matt Noffs