Sanjay Hona
When I was growing up I was lost…
I’m 20 years old and I’ve been living in Minto for the majority of my life. Throughout my younger years, we moved to other places but we always came back.
I work part-time as a teacher at TAFE. I teach at an Outreach Program called SWYPE.
SWYPE is a youth program - South West Youth Peer Education. We deal with a lot of marginalised young people. Specifically, I work with more Pacific Islander young people in art and cultural programs — music and drama and dancing.
I’m half New Zealand Maori and half Fijiian Indian. My mum’s Maori and my dad’s Fijian Indian. I remember growing up when it was predominantly a Koori community. More recently it seems to be that the Pacific Islander community is growing.
When I was growing up I was lost, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my future. I had these crazy ideas about joining the army or becoming a police officer or a famous actor. In that respect my drama teacher in high school took me under her wing and guided me.
Toward the end of my high school years, I met Charlie and Mal*. I was doing some programs with them. As I got into youth work, they were my role models, I looked up to them and they gave me the drive to want to do youth work.
You talk to people about Minto and they always say the same thing, “Everyone’s so friendly. They all know each other and it’s a really family oriented place.” There are a lot of different subcultures but at the end of the day it’s the Minto community and everyone gets along and respects each other. I always felt really safe here. Bad things happen in your life but you know that there’s a sense of community here.
One of the first positive experiences I had as a youth worker was here at SWYPE where we work with a lot of youth-at-risk. We used to run a program here called ‘Maximus’ which was a TAFE program for youth-at-risk, early school leavers and repeat offenders and juvenile justice clients, trying to teach these kids to dance. A lot of them weren’t interested as there were a lot of boys. One boy had been in the program for a while, he hadn’t engaged in anything. He was shy and introverted so when I was running my dance classes I’d encourage him to come and join in. He didn’t want to but one day when I was taking a dance class, he stood up and joined in. I didn’t make a big deal of it and went along with it. I said to Mal, “Did you see that guy?” and she was thrilled and said she didn’t know how I did that. He never talked but now he was up and dancing and laughing around.
It’s experiences like that which make it worthwhile. If as a youth worker I only touch one person, then I’m doing my job.