Posts List

During National Child Protection Week, SAYF stood alongside Professor Leah Bromfield and Charlie Jackson OAM to present a Call for Change in protecting children. SAYF members delivered speeches that highlighted stories of resilience, justice, and the urgent need for community-led reform in how we think about and act on child safety. Image Credit: Australian Centre for Child Protection

In collaboration with Flinders University, SAYF's 14 to 18 branch was engaged to provide structured feedback on a new app adaptation of Metacognitive Training for Eating Disorders. Members were given the app to work through and facilitated an internal session exploring what worked, what did not land, what felt inaccessible, and what would genuinely reach young people experiencing eating disorders. This is youth voice built into the design of a health tool, not bolted on afterwards.

SAYF presented to the Department for Education Executive Committee on Curriculum and Learning, advocating for the integration of life skills education into the school curriculum. Our members made the case for a future where young people graduate equipped with real-world knowledge including financial literacy, navigating relationships, understanding government systems, and knowing their rights.

Over three days, SAYF members participated as facilitators for interactive sessions with Year 10 students from across South Australia, exploring what active citizenship looks like in practice. Our founding director Amber delivered the keynote, sparking conversations on leadership, participation, and what it means to show up for your community as a young person. Image Credit: Department for Education SA

The City of Onkaparinga engaged SAYF to help them understand how to genuinely reach young people when developing their life skills workshop program. SAYF worked with the Council to understand their goals, gaps and opportunities to strengthen their program. We received their questions, facilitated an internal session with members to explore what life skills young people actually want and need, how they want to access them, and what would make them show up. We reported this back to the Council...

SAYF members joined the Committee for Adelaide's Listening Forum to share young people's priorities across a range of issues including loneliness, housing, climate, and transport. We worked with other attendees to highlight that real progress at a city level starts with community inclusion at every level of decision-making.

SA Health approached SAYF to gather young people's perspectives on a series of questions related to their public health planning work. SAYF received the brief, designed the facilitation, and ran the session internally with members across relevant focus areas including mental health, education, and community safety. A structured report was delivered back to SA Health capturing key themes, direct member perspectives, and priority recommendations.

Amber and Sienna represented SAYF as the only young people in the room, advocating for youth-informed strategies on mental health, domestic violence education, and community safety. Their contributions were personally recognised by Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier, reinforcing the value and necessity of embedding youth perspectives into public health policy.

At Investigator College, 2 SAYF members facilitated a workshop empowering young people to form their own youth-led committees for climate action. Participants explored what local leadership looks like in practice and left with concrete tools to organise in their own communities. Image Credit: City of Victor Harbor

Three SAYF members joined the Office for Women's roundtable on eSafety and image-based abuse, sharing youth perspectives on one of the most pressing safety issues facing young people today. We engaged with Minister Katrine Hildyard and eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to identify prevention strategies and shape policy change.

SAYF members took the stage alongside Dr Ben Lohmeyer at the Department for Education's Wellbeing Leaders' Summit, speaking to hundreds of educators about the importance of authentic youth voice in wellbeing policy. Young speakers shared lived experiences of school, inspiring educators to reimagine what student leadership and wellbeing support can actually look like. Image Credit: Department for Education

Representing youth voices at the Department for Infrastructure and Transport Executive Roundtable, SAYF advocated for accessible, safe, and sustainable public transport across South Australia. Our team contributed directly to shaping the state's 30-year transport strategy, ensuring that young people's priorities are embedded in long-term planning from the outset.

At City of Salisbury's Roar Youth Summit, SAYF facilitated a workshop on health equity, exploring young people's access to fair health outcomes across South Australia. Participants shared insights on how limited discussions about equity in schools affect trust and wellbeing. SAYF synthesised these perspectives and shared them directly with the City of Salisbury to inform youth-driven solutions and policy action.

The Cancer Council engaged SAYF's 18 to 24 branch to provide feedback on their HPV campaign and explore how it could be extended to better reach young people. SAYF received a set of questions from the Cancer Council, designed a facilitated workshop around them, and ran the session internally with members. The outputs were synthesised into a detailed written summary covering what resonated, and clear recommendations for how the campaign could be strengthened.

3 SAYF members spent a day across Parndana and Kingscote campuses speaking to over 400 young people in Years 7 to 12 about youth advocacy, resilience, and leadership. The visit marked the beginning of something significant for Kangaroo Island, building the connections and foundations for what is now the established Kangaroo Island Youth Movement.

SAYF hosted a stall at the City of Onkaparinga's Eco Collective, sharing the organisation's work and impact with community members from across the region. It was a genuine opportunity to connect local sustainability action with youth voice and civic participation, and to show what SAYF looks like in action outside of a formal workshop setting.

SAYF's 14 to 18 branch members serve on the Oversight Committee for Flinders University's Trauma Aware School Village project, a national multi-year research initiative exploring how trauma-informed approaches can be embedded across entire school communities rather than applied only at the individual student level. This is a sustained governance involvement from young people in a nationally significant piece of education research, and it is one of the clearest examples of what it looks like...

A group of SAYF members were invited to join Natasha Stott Despoja, Commissioner for the Royal Commission into Family, Sexual and Domestic Violence, for a one-off workshop session facilitated alongside the Commissioner for Children and Young People, Helen Connolly. Members came to the table to share their perspectives, stories, and views on family, sexual, and domestic violence as young people with lived experience of the issues the Royal Commission was examining. SAYF members shared...

SAYF was engaged by the Department of Human Services to contribute to the design of the See the Signs campaign. Members were given campaign materials and design questions and facilitated an internal session exploring what worked, what did not, what felt authentic, and what would actually land with young people. The session generated specific, usable feedback on messaging, visuals, and accessibility that was synthesised and delivered back to DHS as a formal recommendations document. Image...

Over three years, SAYF has been embedded as co-designers, peer researchers, data analysers, and contributors to the written outputs of Flinders University's study on loneliness among young people. SAYF members have been present across every stage of the research, from shaping the questions to leading focus groups to contributing to the analysis that became our first peer-reviewed academic paper on the affective economics of loneliness in school. Image Credit: Flinders University