BoysTown

What They Are Known For

For more than 50 years, BoysTown, a non-profit organization is known to help disadvantaged youth in their life by means of providing them:

• Training
• Counselling &
• Support services

They are dedicated to enhance life quality of youngsters, specifically those who have problems in interacting and are lacking voices. They get into various fund raising activities to support their goals.

How BoysTown raises funds

The organization holds 15-prize draws every year, which includes 10 luxurious house draws and 5 prestigious car draws. Plus they receive appreciated funds from bequests, workplace giving, donations and other fundraisers. Even their mission is being supported financially by Local, State and Federal Governments by means of fees, grants, services or in-kinds to help in supporting their programs.

What BoysTown do

The organization does their best in carrying out the following services from their fundraising activities:

Support disadvantaged young people

BoysTown provides a lot of counseling as well as support services for young generation and their families that involve:

• Online and telephone counselling
• Face to face counselling &
• Group support and workshops

They offer professional help and support to Australian community staffed by experienced counselors. Helpline number for kids and parents are open 24*7 for assistance. Even their representatives can organize face to face interaction with the counselor, if desired for. Along with young people, their families can participate in a number of individual education gatherings or workshops or activities to help them lead a better life. The topics in such meetings can involve different subjects like alcohol, drug dependency, cookery and hygiene.

Education, Training and employment

The organization develops several educational and training programs to improve life of youngsters by overcoming hurdles and helping them seek higher education and employment. They aim to develop their literacy and numeracy, boost self-confidence, determine and sort out issues having negative impact on their lives. Their various programs include the following:

• Their social business enterprises offer real job and paid opportunities to disadvantaged youngsters (15 and 25) years. They initiate providing OJT (on-job-training) and employment opportunities to young people and unemployed for long-term and ready them for open employment.
• Employability skills program for disadvantaged and unemployed people learn required skills that are must to pave the way for employment opportunities.
• NCAP (New Careers for Aboriginal People) program endeavors increasing involvement of Aboriginal people in labor market via determining, creating as well as supporting opportunities for education and employment.
• Their VTEC (Vocational and Training Employment Centre) offers customized pre-employment trainings, personal coaching and placements for Aboriginal people & Torres Strait Islander natives.

Family and community services

BoysTown functions numerous programs that help family members connect each other and their communities as well. Children and their parents might feel detached from the society. They provide services to children, families and communities find and create assistance networks and better futures. Their programs involve the following:

AOD (Alcohol and Drug Program): This is for youngsters misusing alcohol and drugs and impacting their lives badly.

CARE (Coordinated Advocacy and Referrals for Early Intervention): It shows path to the families to determine their requirements and strengths, improve development of their children and let experience them a positive school environment.

CFC (Communities for Children Initiative): An early and preventative program for families who are at disadvantageous position in providing child care services.

Starfish program: Being a Family Mental Health Support Service, it offers services for kids and young people having the risk of suffering from mental health problems.

Indigenous in Focus programs: This agenda aims at helping indigenous youngsters and their families in their societies.

In addition, they have a Parentline service, which is a top-secret telephone service for professional counseling, providing education and supporting parents along with those who care for children and youngsters. This service is available from 8-10 PM 7 days a week to natives residing in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Refuges and Accommodation

Their refuges and accomodation involves the following programs:

Refuge for homeless families: In Australia, several families have grown to be leading in becoming homeless. The families having children are, in fact, 1/3rd of overall homeless people in the country. San Miguel Family Center of BoysTown offers shelter and support to these families for short duration.

Refuge for family violence: Domestic violence and sexual assault are the most persistent problems in the country. Therefore the act of children and ladies escaping the plight leave them with no shelter, social support and income support at the most. Family Violence of BoysTown offers them with temporary shelter and support services.

Additionally, BoysTown also help in relieving poverty, sufferings, distress, helplessness etc in the community. Now, look on who they help.

Who BoysTown helps:

BoysTown believes that every individual has the right to lead a promising and hopeful future. Moving towards their mission, they have offered assistance to more than 2, 75,000 children, youngsters and families in 2012-2013 including:

• Kids - 2,151
• Young people - 8,787
• Families - 14,462

Even more numbers of people are contacting them for counselling, employment and other services.

How BoysTown functions:

Following are some of the aspects they focus on:

Mission: Enabling youngsters - focus mainly on marginalized and those with no voice - to live a good life.

Heritage: It had been established in the year 1961 to assist youngsters. This was the duration when BoysTown Art Union had been incepted to fund their services and accomplish their mission.

Values: Their values are:

• Be Brother and Sister to all
• Faith and Zeal
• Professionalism
• Service Perseverance &
• Innovation and Resourcefulness

Core behaviors: Their core behaviors - Respect, Excellence and Creativity are the main guidelines on how they work jointly and help the community. These three aspects offer clarity and proper understanding of values and the process of demonstrating them rightly in the workplace.

BoysTown team:

A proper team is just the need if you are to work for a mission. They have a full dedicated team of more than 500 employees:

• Leaders - Executive team and BoysTown Board.
• Team members - Front line employees include qualified counselors, social workers, educators, trainers and youth workers. They are again supported by professionals in IT, HR, marketing and communications, fundraising, finance, research departments etc.
• Other supports - They also obtain support from community volunteers mentoring young people helping them further in numeracy and literacy programs.

Overall, BoysTown is working for a good cause and if you think that you can also contribute something, then you can buy tickets for its prize draw. Their latest first prize is an absolute oceanfront home worth $2.65M, which is quite huge. There are several other lucrative lottery plans to entice people to take part and at the same time contribute towards a wonderful cause.