Empowering People

I first fell in love with the cause of empowerment back in 2010 when I was 17 and, having just graduated school, spent a good portion of my gap year volunteering at a school in Nepal. I lived in a house on the outskirts of Kathmandu with 12 girls from all around the world. To tackle the mammoth task of feeding us all, my host family had hired a maid; Fulmaija, who was just 16, didn’t speak a word of English, and was being paid 6000 rupees ($75) a month.

As my Nepali began to improve, and Fulmaija started to pick up on the English which was constantly being spoken around her, we began to communicate. Soon, all of us in the house were great friends with Fulmaija, relishing in her cheeky company. We used to dress her up in our old clothes we had brought over, and laughed as she had her first taste of vegemite. Fulmaija was incredibly intelligent, and I have no doubt that had her family decided to keep her in school, she would have gone on to do phenomenal things as an educated woman.

Towards the end of our time together, Fulmaija began to recieve frequent calls from a strange man offering her highly paid ‘maid work’ in India, until one day, she disappeared, never to be seen by us again. What I have learned since then, is that Fulmaija is almost certainly being forced to engage in sex work in the brothels of India, like thousands of other young Nepali girls her age each year. The rate of HIV infection is high, as is suicide and unwanted pregnancy amongst these girls.

As Fulmaija’s likely fate sunk in, I began to think about how any society could place so little value on women that things like this were just allowed to happen…

When I say “began to think”, I began to think a lot. Then I began to research. A lot. What I found, was that many of the developing world’s problems are, so some degree, a result of gender inequality. If we could just find a way to empower women, stories like Fulmaija’s wouldn’t exist to be told.

Opportunities for empowerment are everywhere. If we lived in a world where young gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer people could all feel empowered by their sexualities right from the get go, we would greatly eliminate the appalling rates of depression, suicide and alienation experienced by members of our community.

Right now, I’m studying a Bachelor of Justice at Queensland University of Technology, due to be completed in the middle next year. What I love most about my degree is that almost every unit is looking at ways to empower those who are disadvantaged. Hopefully, I’ll go from this on to do my honours year looking at human trafficking intervention practices, and then maybe a PhD after that.

For the moment, Pinnacle is empowering me to make this happen. I can’t begin to describe how wonderful it feels to have the support of the Foundation behind me. To start this semester not worrying about how I was going to find the extra money for textbooks, or how I was going to manage to nab one of the university’s highly elusive shared PC’s to work on during the day was an enormous relief. More exciting that this though, is knowing that I am part of a generation of GLBTIQ young people who Pinnacle will continue to empower.

By Harriet Horsfall

Where I am at now

Looking back at about seven months ago, it is more than clear that receiving a Pinnacle Scholarship has turned my life around. Seven months ago I had absolutely no idea I would end up studying Youth Work and Alcohol & Other Drugs at RMIT University, and have an amazing mentor. At that time I was experiencing accommodation instability and started to not believe in myself. I began thinking about giving up on my hopes and dreams and re-prioritising my goals.

Receiving a Pinnacle Scholarship means more to me than the financial assistance with course fees and materials. Don’t get me wrong, it has saved me from great financial stress and provided me with relief; however it is the fact that someone saw something in me and believed in me that made me feel that there is hope. So I decided then I was not going to give up that easy.

Now I’m doing well in my courses and have an awesome placement working with a very diverse and creative group of same-sex attracted young people. I love this placement so much it does not feel like work at all. My partner sometimes gets a bit annoyed that I do not spend a lot of time at home due to classes and placement commitments, but she knows that in the end it would be all worth it and she sees that I am happy.

My mentor Lauren is an incredible lady. I honestly could not have asked for a better mentor. She simply ROCKS! Lauren has done so much for me in the past few months. Not only does she assist me with my assignments and finding placement opportunities, she also took me to my first professional development conference about mental health and social media. This challenged me a little because I have never been around so many professionals before. I’m glad she did take me because shortly after that my placement supervisor out of the blue asked me to attend the Hume City Council’s launch of their Youth Counselling Service on his behalf. I was more confident with meeting other professionals and networking with them.

Lauren has also helped me solve my first ethical dilemmas as a Youth Worker such as: boundaries and being torn between being a friend and a worker. I’m extremely lucky to have Lauren as my mentor. She is kind, hilarious and great to talk. I hope to stay in touch with her after the mentorship. I could go on for ages about the awesomeness of Lauren but I guess you get the idea that she is my idol, so I will stop here.

Being a Pinnacle Scholar is a great honour and privilege. It changed the way I perceived my life. When I officially start working in the community services sector I would not hesitate in recommending the Pinnacle Foundation to my future clients to help them achieve their full potential and get them where they would like to go in life.

By Laura Partington

Pen and Paper Preferred

I guess I’m a little old school in regards to writing. I hate to draft anything using a computer. I think a pen and paper let me keep a certain degree of personality in my writing by allowing me to structure it exactly as I please, without margins, double-spacing, and colourful lines under certain words just to prove my incompetence when it comes to spelling. I also can’t go past the satisfaction of obliterating, through paper-shredding scribble, that sentence which I decided wasn’t going to gel with the rest of my essay.

I certainly have a passion for writing, not to be confused with writing flair. I make no claims to be a brilliant writer, I’m mediocre at best, but I have found immense value in the sense of escapism that comes with constructing a piece of text on a subject I’m passionate about. I have certainly found this feeling of passion with the recent completion of my first essay in almost six years! It was on the subject of aged care for gay man and lesbians. A subject I am particularly interested in, having worked and volunteered in ageing and disability support services. I found particular satisfaction in criticising an area that I work in which is only now beginning to recognise the specific needs of a minority so often overlooked. I was so incredibly unaware that the services I may need to utilise one day are almost non-existent. Now I am not trying to illuminate this issue just because I’ve been given the platform to do so, I am simply trying to illustrate the ease with which I have been able to fully immerse myself in this particular writing assignment thanks almost solely to the assistance provided by the Pinnacle Foundation. I am not under any stresses to find funding or support for my university life. My writing process was completely absent of any distractions and I was able to put all of myself into the task at hand.

Although I have had a constant stream of assignments since beginning my studies, I am relatively relaxed in my approach to them and I have Pinnacle to thank. 

By Steven Walker