Brighton Youth Action Group on a mission to combat stigma and improve lives of isolated kids

Kids in some of Hobart’s most impoverished suburbs have banded together to battle against stigma, improve outcomes for local youth, and have fun doing it.

Titus Dowdle- Casey 16, Kailee Rose 13, Brighton Council youth engagement officer John Flack and Jazmine Smith 16 at Bond Place, Gagebrook. Picture: Chris Kidd

Members of the Brighton Youth Action Group (BYAG) have issued a passionate plea for “respect”, saying people living in Hobart’s northern suburbs deserve to be treated fairly as they try to shake off stigmatisation resulting from the actions of a handful of “bad eggs”.

The BYAG is supported by Brighton Council and provides a platform for young people in the municipality to create meaningful and positive change in their community.

Jazmine Smith, 16, of Gagebrook, recently joined the group because she wanted to be an “advocate for youth”.

“Especially for the Brighton area, there’s a lot of stigma. So I was like, ‘I might as well do it, I might as well make change if I can’,” she said.

Titus Dowdle- Casey 16, Kailee Rose 13, Brighton Council youth engagement officer John Flack and Jazmine Smith 16 at Bond Place, Gagebrook, where local youth are given the opportunity to socialise and take part in activities, including music. Picture: Chris Kidd

“There are just some bad eggs and people put us all in that little category of a couple of people being bad or they see the adults of the area doing stupid stuff and they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, the children must be bad, [as well]’.”

Metro Tasmania evening bus services to Gagebrook have recently been suspended due to a spate of rock-throwing incidents and Smith said the move was having an adverse impact on the local youth.

“I think we just [need] more general respect. Especially with a lot of the Metro [issues],” she said.

“I understand that to a point. But it gets really irritating. Obviously there are people that shouldn’t be allowed on the buses but what about the youth and the adults that need to be coming on the buses?

Georgie Vozar, centre, shows children how to make pottery tiles at Bond Place in Gagebrook, run by the Material Institute. Picture: SAM ROSEWARNE.

“A lot of that [makes me] pretty angry.”

Kailee Rose, 13, of Granton, said she enjoyed being a member of BYAG and had joined after hearing about it from a friend.

She said there were several problems that needed to be solved in Brighton to make life easier for its young people.

“There’s a bunch of people going around bullying everyone around the community … and there’s just a bunch of people not doing the right thing,” she said.

Another member of the group, Titus Dowdle-Casey, 16, said BYAG was trying to find solutions to the problems affecting the youth so it could pave the way for a better future.

He echoed Rose’s concerns about bullying.

“I do know that there are a lot of problems with bullies because they do know that all they have to do is be outside of school grounds and the school can’t really do anything about it,” Dowdle-Casey said.