Youth Week 2008 @ Canberra

Free is good. And goodies, in turn, come in a cute little blue bag

Youth Week? What is that? National Youth Week (NYW) is Australia’s largest celebration of young people. Generally, people aged 12-25 years all across Australia get involved in NYW every year.

The celebration in Canberra may not be as grand as the ones in Sydney or Melbourne but hey, at least we had fun in the midst of preparation for our exams and studies. Here in Canberra, it is held in Garema Place.

Free BBQ!

2 guys beating each other out - with super inflated boxing gloves and a bouncy boxing ring

Here, they have a number of booths of various community centers and social services groups which were promoting themselves and to create an awareness that there are help available to the youths.

They had a few booths of various community centers as well as counseling groups on that day. These groups sort of like advertised themselves by handing out free brochures and goodies.

A scrambler on display!

One of the community centers

They are meant for teenagers with problems due to anxiety, stress, loneliness and other teen related problems. This is actually good as on this day, their presence create an awareness that you are never alone when you have problems.

This year, their main project was to create awareness that there were people among us who has eating disorders. It was pretty cool that they asked people who were present to write something on the many weighing scales which were on displayed.

Here are a few shots regarding the display:

A passer-by doing her part by writing something down on the weighing scale

One of the very nicely decorated weighing scales. You can either choose oil paint or a permanent marker

Scaling Heights to Freedom - It's like an irony, weighing scales and eating disorder

The volunteer over-looking participants painting

Basically, NYW is all youths gathering together to voice out their opinions and voice their concerns. They have on-going events such as talent shows, competitions, live concerts (for bigger cities like Melbourne) and art displays.

Here in ACT, there were quite a number events (the ones that we saw during our one hour there) such as a cheer-leading dance routine, live bands, hula-hoop dance, a girl walking on broken glass, a belly-dance performer and street jugglers.

Here are some of the pictures of the performances:

The MC for the day. Notable quote: "You, sit down there and listen to me!"

Hula-hoop

The volunteers of their respective organizations and community service centers

A girl walking on broken glass with her bare feet

A cute little doggy - she stole my sausage!

The cheer-leading squad

the belly-dancer shaking her.. erm.. belly buttons with a sword on her head

The street acrobats and their team of jugglers behind them.

The jugglers. Note: the left guy kept on making mistakes which quite humorous when the right guy threw the pins at him.

I guess that's all for now. Been busy reading my articles to update frequently nowadays. Laters!