I first came to Youth Insearch in 2008 as a troubled teen. I had a lot of issues going on in my life and I felt alone, depressed and I had a lot of anger which I kept bottled up inside for quite a while. At my first program I had very low self esteem and I didn’t talk at all. My older brother came with me that weekend and he did most of the talking for me. Although I didn’t talk, I did a lot of listening and I found out that there were a lot of teens facing the same issues as me and I realised that I was not alone. In that one weekend I had gained confidence, strength, made friends and felt accepted for once in my life. I decided that I liked Youth Insearch so I went back to more programs and slowly started making changes in myself and stopped behaving the way that I had been. When I heard about doing leadership training for Youth Insearch, I knew I had to give it a go so I put my name down for it and when I got a letter in the mail saying I was accepted, I was over the moon!

A couple of months ago I got the opportunity to travel to Sydney for a Youth Insearch weekend program even though I usually go to the Queensland weekend programs. Going to other states for the weekend programs is a reward which is usually given to the Youth Insearch leaders who work hard and have proved themselves, so I felt very lucky to be travelling to New South Wales and I knew that the weekend would be special.

At the program, my role was the Program Coordinator for the weekend, which meant that I was in charge. I also welcomed everyone to the program and I made a lot of the big decisions because I was the person that the other leaders would go to if they needed to discuss an issue or something like that. I was also the facilitator of the trust session, which is a very important part of the weekend program, it helps the young people to trust the whole group and to break away some of the trust issues they may have. For the session, I decided to do trust falls, where a person stands on a table and falls back and gets caught by their group. I think they went extremely well, everyone was mature about it and the team effort was excellent.

The weekend was very emotional for everyone, and it was very eye opening for a lot of people. I believe that every single person that has been through Youth Insearch has gone away from the weekend with at least something. Every program I have been on, the whole group just connects and we’re like a big family for the weekend. This is one of the reasons why people find this program so important, the support and the loving environment is just wonderful. I think that after the weekend everyone felt different, people had more confidence and a higher self esteem, some had decided to stop their unhealthy lifestyle choices and a lot of people found closure to their issues that they had come to the program for. After the program a lot of people experience what we call Youth Insearch blues, where they miss the program and they really want to come back to another one, and I think it motivates them to make the changes in their life so that they are able to come back again. I love Youth Insearch and I am so passionate about it because it has helped me through a lot and I believe it’s my turn to give back to the program what I got out of it. It’s hard to explain a Youth Insearch program to someone who hasn’t been, it’s just one of those things you have to experience yourself.