Often, as people living safe, supported, and privileged lives, we tend to forget that a large portion of the human beings experiencing poverty and sleeping rough across Australia are children. As a registered charity (and as individuals) we here at ProjectKindness feel a sense of responsibility to do whatever we can to offer these children and their caregivers as much care as possible. In fact, we’ve recently decided to prioritise our scope of support to focus primarily on families, particularly children. Here are just a few reasons why we feel this is the most important thing we can be doing right now.
Instilling a sense of hope and joy
It’s not easy to feel hopeful when you are stuck below the poverty line, as a growing number of Australians continue to be. This is especially true for children and their caregivers. Last Christmas a Salvation Army report identified an alarming 11% of Aussies felt anxious about providing food for their families over the festive season, 21% were concerned their kids wouldn’t receive presents, and 5% avoided conversations around ‘Christmas’ due to financial pressure. This amounts to millions of Aussies feeling hopeless and struggling to find joy at a time where joy should be felt most. If our support can help even a few of these families feel hopeful for upcoming celebrations and be able to give their kids joyful experiences, this is a huge win. Hope is what keeps us going, after all.
Trauma reduction
Many studies, including this one, have shown that teens and adults who experienced childhood trauma and neglect are likely to develop violent tendencies and carry out behaviours like domestic violence, sexual assault, emotional abuse, and more. We know that human behaviour is shaped in a big way by the people and the experiences we encounter throughout our lives. This carries through generations and affects not only individuals but communities as well. So, our hope is to offer some relief for children who have been caught up in these painful cycles so that they and their parents can experience kindness and care from their community firsthand – to know they are not alone and to hopefully reduce the risks of trauma and neglect for future generations.
Children shape the future
This is such an important thing to remember: the future of the world and humanity rests within the tiny hands of today’s children. The least we can do, as adults who care about that future, is to lay the foundations for a good and kind world and support the human beings who will inherit it after our time here is done. For the most part, when children and their caregivers are shown true kindness, respect, and love, these aspects follow them into adulthood as part of their value system. The more children growing up to hold these values, and the more parents who are enbled to model these behaviours, the more likely we will be to see movements of true kindness and liberation on small and large scales. This is the world we hope to see blossom for the generations to come.
If you’re as passionate about supporting Sydney’s most underpriviliged kids as we are, we encourage you to help us out. You can visit our donation page via the button below. Thank you so much – we are grateful for any and all assistance.
