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A brighter future for
all young people
Our Story
Founded in 2018 by Andy Bell, Youth Gurus was established to provide specialist youth support to young people and the youth sector, explicitly in rural and regional communities, to level the playing field between metro and country Victoria.
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Originally from South West Victoria, Andy's life was defined by the opportunities and supports he had as a teenager. Skip forward twenty years and Andy had worked with tens of thousands of young people as a highly skilled facilitator and youth worker.
During his tenure as the Rural Manager at the Youth Affairs Council Victoria (YACVic), Victoria's peak body for young people, Andy witnessed the need for increased specialist youth services, supports and opportunities for young people in rural and regional Australia.
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When Andy left YACVic in late 2018 he couldn't walk away from young people and his fellow youth workers in rural and regional Victoria.
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Youth Gurus was started the very next day.
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What we offer
We provide specialist support in the areas of youth mental health, youth engagement and positive youth development.
We operate on a contract basis to bring innovative solutions and industry best practice to develop capacity in our project partners, meet the needs of the Victorian youth sector and support the young people they work with and for.
We are accredited and highly experienced Youth & Teen Mental Health First Aid instructors with Mental Health First Aid Australia.
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Our youth engagement work is based upon principles of youth participation and co-design and is conducted in alignment with IAP2 industry best practice for authentic community and stakeholder engagement.
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Who we work with
bringing our specialist knowledge and skills
to elevate their work with and for young people.
we have worked with:
Gurus
5
Projects
27
Stakeholders
482
Young People
8,853
Since 2018 we have engaged with:
Our Mission
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Youth Gurus exists to improve outcomes for young people in the areas of youth mental health, youth engagement and positive youth development.
Our Vision
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That all young people are supported to be healthy, happy, heard and 100% themselves.
What we stand for
We believe all young people are experts in their own lives and should have their rights upheld, freedom of expression maintained and every opportunity to explore, fail, learn, grow, laugh (or not) and simply be. We believe young people aren't just our future. They are also the now.
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We acknowledge that our work takes place on what always was and always will be Aboriginal land. We pay our respect to Aboriginal Elders past, present, and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions and culture. We look to learn from, collaborate with and work in support of our Aboriginal brothers and sisters.
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What people say
Youth Gurus provided the us with the mentoring, facilitation and program support we needed to deliver a dynamic youth participation program and design the best youth engagement strategy and toolkit we could for our stakeholders across regional Victoria.
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They were super responsive to our needs, brought new ideas, energy and expertise to our team, and helped guide us through the co-design process with our young people.
Highly recommend engaging Youth Gurus if you want to take your work with young people to the next level.
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Kellie Tait
Regional Sport Victoria
Contact us
Email: andy@youthgurus.com.au​
Mob: 0428 070 249
Mail: PO Box 261 Aireys Inlet VIC 3231
ABN 33 589 470 254
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