Queensland Museum and the Design
Council, contributed as a member
of the Federal ANZAC Centenary
Commemoration Youth Working
Group, and was on the organising
committee of the 2014 Youth G20
Summit.
figured out how to bring it together to
achieve their goal.
Their first project was setting up
mobile libraries in Indonesia. They
got nine different organisations to
have “libraries” through boxes of
books that were driven around on the
back of motor bikes through villages
in different cities. Where access to
education was limited, Kamar Buku
brought that access.
Born in Sudan, Yassmin came to
Australia with her family at the age of
two. We could go on and on about her
journey to this point, but you can read
more about it in her memoirs, due to be
published by Random House in 2016.
“I am a big fan of bringing in different
Which is pretty impressive in itself,
people together – being a connector.”
given she’s yet to turn twenty-five.
YWB’s biggest initiative, which is
With all her different projects and
Yassmin’s favourite collaborative
different activities – working with many project, is the Spark Engineering Camp
different people – collaboration has
– which is about connecting with
been a key part.
high school students who might not
normally consider going into tertiary
“Youth Without Borders came from the
education, and sharing some of the
idea of wanting to collaborate. It was
inspiring experiences and opportunities
the Asia-Pacific City Summit in 2007
that university has to offer.
and there were all these young people
talking about the different things they
“It started out as collaboration between
were interested in, running different
people as opposed to large organisations,
organisations, but they weren’t working
and it started out really small. It’s my
together. Youth Without Borders was born favourite because it was an idea we had
out of this frustration and essentially
that we realised could be very powerful
its initial thing was about how do we
and it’s one that we actively see changes
collaborate. We called it Project-Based
people’s lives as they go through it.”
Collaboration.”
In telling the story of how they nearly
This initiative was about finding better didn’t get off the ground to it now
ways of doing what they were trying to having a budget of over $100,000 a
do in their own separate ways: rather
year, with two camps in Melbourne and
than reinventing the wheel, they looked Brisbane, Yassmin credits help from a
at what was already out there and
lot of people.
GLOSS JULY 2015
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