Mentoring Create Beach Fun - Feb 4, 2012

2012 has started off with great enthusiasm and energy for the Melbourne Leaving Care, Custodial and Community Youth Justice Mentoring Programs, with the annual beach community day launching a fresh new year and a fresh new working relationship with the Create foundation at Altona Beach on Saturday 4th February.

Whitelion Mentoring and Create staff have worked closely in the past few months to come up with new ways of working together, sharing resources and supporting each other's work, and this paid off for everyone at the beach day, especially for the young people involved.

25 young people and mentors from Whitelion, 9 young people from the Create Youth Advisory Group, and 9 staff from both Create and Whitelion participated on the day, with Create staff facilitating lots of different fun activities on the sand. During the breaks there were games of beach cricket (on the sand and in the water!), water fights, sun tanning (no burning!) and an awesome BBQ lunch with lovely refreshing drinks kindly provided by Schweppes.

On a more serious note, the day provided the young people with the opportunity to give their feedback to CREATE staff about their thoughts and feelings on their care experience, a valuable opportunity for Whitelion's young people to have their voices heard, and also for Create staff to gather this information to help them advocate for young people in care in areas of policy development and reform.

Our thanks goes to Gill and Renee from Whitelion Mentoring and Kristie and Amanda from Create for organising and facilitating such a fantastic day.