UN to discover what youth want

Lucy Stronach a student at the University of Western Australia, finalising her dissertation as part of her Law and Society Honours, has been named the Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations for 2021. 

Lucy will be consulting with young people in every State and Territory across Australia during a listening tour and will focus on improving engagement with young people in rural communities as well as making the program more accessible to disadvantaged young Australians.

She will gather data on what issues young people care most about, the future they want to build and involve them in being key drivers in decision-making. In 2021, Lucy will take these ideas to the United Nations where she will advocate on behalf of Australia’s young Australians. 

Lucy will be asking young Australians the following question: ‘What would Australia look like if young people were the key drivers of decision making?’

The Youth Representative’s Listening Tour is the largest face-to-face consultation of young people in Australia. Over 10,000 young people were engaged in 2019 by last year’s Youth Representative, Kareem El-Ansary. 

 “This is a position I don’t take on lightly. Considering the unprecedented events of 2020, I know there has never been a time where youth representation and empowerment was needed more,” Lucy says. 

“Young people represent some of the most engaged and educated voices in the world and I have never seen such passion for change as I do right now. Now is the time that we can make a massive impact to the systems that govern our lives”.

Lucy has had practical experience in the field of crime and justice with the Parliament of Western Australia, Western Australian Police Force, and the Department of Corrective Services.

Her work has taken her to the streets of Mumbai to fight for the empowerment of sex workers, to juvenile prisons in San Diego to assist with literacy skills in young offenders, and to the UNDP in Bangkok to work with youth leaders in the promotion of human rights and justice.