Empowered to make a difference

Passionate youth leaders from Albany have been inspired by their roles in this year’s WA YMCA Youth Parliament program.

Kensley Crowley and Jordina Quain were chosen out of hundreds of applicants to be involved in State Parliament and get their voices heard.

Ms Crowley, who is completing her Year 12 studies this year, said the four months in the program had inspired her to develop her leadership skills and work on issues she was passionate about.

“I thought it was such an awesome process, to be able to research and write a Bill and scrutinising another Bill to make sure that it could be the best that it could be,” she said.

“It was great to look at different issues that people care about and to work together and create discussion on it and building the Bill to the best that it could be.”

In the program, each member is given the chance to comment on Government policy and make recommendations on key changes to benefit the youth.

Ms Crowley was involved in the Driver’s Education Accessibility Bill 2019, which passed with a vote of 35-15.

“We came up with this Bill over a couple of months on how we want to subsidise driving education and mandate the spread of training centres across regional areas to make sure that young people actually have the opportunity to learn to drive and to get their 50 hours done,” she said.

“We want to give regional youths more accessibility to extracurricular programs and to do that they will need to get their driver’s licence.”

Ms Quain, who just finished her studies in Perth, said it was a rewarding experience.

“The power of being able to talk about what you’re passionate about was incredible,” she said.