On Thursday 30 August 2018, Hope Street CEO, Donna Bennett, gave a presentation at the Impact100 Melbourne 2018/2019 Theme Launch - Youth Homelessness.

Impact100 Melbourne is a group of 100 diverse donors who are collectively empowered to make a significant impact on issues affecting their local community. Each year, this passionate giving circle focuses on a social issue and directs strategically-targeted grants to local not-for-profits in Melbourne.

During the evening Theme Launch in the Melbourne CBD, Donna Bennett revealed the stark facts on youth homelessness, behind which are young people and young families trying to survive without a safe, stable place to call home.The rate of homelessness in Australia has increased 4.6 per cent over the last five years, with more than 24,000 people experiencing homelessness in Victoria, one quarter of whom are young people aged between 12 and 24 years. The leading two reasons that young people experience homelessness are overcrowding in homes and domestic and family violence.

Impact100 Melbourne members were also given a glimpse into the lives of young people who were (at risk of) experiencing homelessness and how Hope Street helped them to find long-term accommodation, regain stability, reconnect to their families and local community, and realise their hopes for a better future.

Hope Street is grateful to Impact100 Melbourne for the opportunity to share the underlying and complex causes and effects of youth homelessness, and, most importantly, for allowing the voices of young people experiencing homelessness to be heard at this very special Theme Launch.

Download

Photos within main article image courtesy of S M Kam:

1. Vanessa Meachen, Impact100 Melbourne Founding Committee Member, introduces Hope Street CEO Donna Bennett
2. Hope Street CEO shares young people’s voices on their experience of homelessness at the Theme Launch