Young Justice Program
YOUNG JUSTICE DAY 2015 – by Luke Canter 5P
With dark circles around their eyes due to an unusually early start, 10 of our Year 5-6 representatives were given the chance to represent Wyvern House in the Young Justice Program. What is the Young Justice Program, you ask? The Young Justice Program is an annual event held by NSW Young Lawyers, giving selected students from offered schools the opportunity to gain a furthered understanding of social justice, society’s issues and how students can influence others for the better.
WHAT WAS GREAT ABOUT THE WORKSHOP?
It not only taught us about issues facing society, but indelibly marked in our minds that we can make a difference. It achieved this through giving us the opportunity to think about solutions to complex problems and discuss them with experts in that field.
WHAT WILL WE DO WITH OUR NEW EXPERIENCE?
The answer: only time will tell. But this workshop has made us much more open to considering these problems; expect some requests to write letters to your local MP soon!
The day started in the picturesque and contemporary NSW Supreme Court’s 13A courtroom, seats strewn about. Schools filed in and we were soon crammed – thoroughly sandwiched between the first and third row. Greeted with an opening address from the NSW Young Lawyers President and Vice President, then the Attorney General, we started the day off. Having agreed to rendezvous at the Law Society of NSW’s training room, we first moved out.
The breakout workshops came soon after. If you wish, there is further information below.
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HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN Here’s where the workshops started legitimately. We began with an introduction to UNICEF and their famous “Convention of the Rights of the Child”. You might be wondering … In what scenario would this be considered a justice issue? We discussed the issue of children in Syria and its neighbouring countries – how aspects of this violated the Convention. |
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CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE ENVIRONMENT This topic was a little bit harder to find any justice issues in. Climate change? The environment? It proved to be a bit of a challenge to find out how this was not just, but we soon found out about the Australian Government’s coal and gas projects, and how they formerly were detrimental to the Great Barrier Reef. |
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LEGAL EDUCATION For Legal Education, we discussed, well, plain law. Revisiting the concept of laws, we slowly moved on to learn just how essential laws were in society. There proved to be no justice issues here, but some interesting discussion arose. |
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ANIMAL RIGHTS We finished off with a controversial topic; animal rights. Here, we looked at the definitions of certain terms (in order to decide whether or not certain animal-related practices were justified). Most of these issues are being attended to by the RSPCA. |
That was the end of the Young Justice program, and we went back to the training room for a debrief session and closing address – but we didn’t go forgotten! Check the NSW Attorney General’s Twitter page!
