Street Peace

Last Tuesday night, Cheryl and David B. attended the Rotary Club of Frankston 2.0 meeting to learn about the youth mentoring program Street Peace. The speaker was Jay Shelling, a young man who heads up a volunteer team of youth workers.

Street Peace is an outreach program to at risk youth. An alarming increase in challenging behaviour of young teens in our cities has increasingly become a problem in our time. In Frankston, weekly there is an increase of at-risk youth congregating in the local shopping centre. These kids range from ages as young as 10 through to 18 years old. Many of them come from extremely dysfunctional families, do not attend a school or an education program, and are sleeping rough. They congregate daily in Frankston, as their only real form of family and community are each other. These kids desperately need to be loved and cared for. Their stories will make you cry as you learn of the physical, emotional and sexual abuse many of them of encountered growing up. Street Peace brings love, care, hope, and transformation to these beautiful lost kids lives through the power of the Gospel and caring mentorship. (source: http://frankston.life/community/street-peace/)

During his talk, Jay explained the complexity of building bonds with at-risk youth and trying to get their trust. Most are unemployable having come from families with virtually no good role models. He finds labouring jobs for them in his landscaping business to start to build some purpose in their lives. Just getting them to front up for work is a challenge in itself but for Jay, that is an important part of making that jump from unemployable to employable. What is happening in Frankston is repeated all over Melbourne and the world. Cheryl and David B. are interested in finding ways that Rotary can be part of the solution.