Ms Patten (Northern Metropolitan) — Last week I had the honour of attending the Hume City Council’s Moving FWD graduation ceremony. I got to watch eight young people participate in the ceremony and celebrate the successful completion of their Moving FWD course.
Moving FWD is a council-run initiative that connects disengaged and disenfranchised young people in the Hume area back into the community, empowering them and enabling them to recognise their potential. It boosts their confidence and reignites their motivation to succeed. These are children who were falling through the cracks. They were not going to school, they were not employed and they just were not moving forward.
Moving FWD has delivered 16 programs in the last four years and boasts a completion rate of 85 per cent. In total an incredible 124 young people on the fringe have been given the encouragement and support to step forward to a more promising future. To date 84 per cent of the participants have gone on to or returned to further education or employment and 80 per cent are now connected with mental health and/or drug and alcohol services.
Sadly, the federal government cut the funding for this program, so it is up to the Hume City Council to continue it, and we are not sure that it will. I take this opportunity to enshrine in Hansard the names of some amazing people: Aidan Cressey, Alyssa Glover, Emmy D’Arcy, Chloe Hubezak, Paul Murray, Rhys McKernan, Samantha Lomas and Tristan Scott-Overs.
