Episode Description
Angeline is a young person with a big heart, and strong passion for helping others in many different communities. Angeline currently studies Youth Work at RMIT, and spends her time volunteering with many community focused programs covering multicultural youth, homelessness and support for newly arrived people to Australia.
In 2020, deep into lockdown, Angeline was inspired by listening to a podcast series The Authentic Me podcast by Mel Yu that prompted self-reflection and prompted her to volunteer for a variety of causes.
Transcript
Note: This transcript is automatically generated and may contain errors.
[START OF TRANSCRIPT]
Rebecca Maakasa:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Stories of Community Resilience. I’m Rebecca, the Podcast Coordinator at 3ZZZ, and I’m
taking an interview today with the wonderful Angeline Karvinkop, who is a student studying youth work at RMIT and is involved in many community focused initiatives which we are going to hear a bit about today. Angeline would like to share about some of these experiences working within different communities and some thoughts about the topic of resilience. Hi Angeline, Welcome. I was hoping you could start with a little bit about why you wanted to speak on the podcast today and what led you to Stories of Community Resilience.
Angeline Karvinkop:
I wanted to acknowledge that this is like something I’ve never done before and I just wanted to come out of my comfort zone and I thought it was a fun way of doing that and I wanted to share a bit my experiences of growing up in Australia and some of the work I’m doing at the moment within the community.
Rebecca Maakasa:
Yeah, amazing.
Angeline Karvinkop:
So I can share a bit about my journey with growing up in Australia. We arrived to Australia when I was two years old with my family
from India and as I’ve grown up, I’ve come to realize that some of the sacrifices that my parents and have made for our family. And like it’s one of the reasons which motivates me to do what I do today. Because I want to make my family proud of me. And I think my message of hope is to inspire other young people and to let them know that your experiences in life don’t determine your future or the life you will have. And it’s the reason why I do what I do every day.
Rebecca Maakasa:
Amazing. Angeline, and you’re involved in so many different initiatives through your studies as well in Youth Work. But also I know that you’re a serial volunteer. You volunteer on many different programs. What are some reflections that stand out to you as a young person sort of navigating this time of figuring out where your work, your career aligns when you have so many interests and passion of looking out for the community?
Angeline Karvinkop:
And I think I wanted to share that. Like even though I’ve failed like a million times and a lot of us do, I think there’s beauty in that as well, because it’s important for everyone to know that not everything will work out in life, and some things you plan for and hope for
don’t always work out. But it’s it’s about acknowledging that growth and pushing past the difficult moments and reaching out for support. And that’s something that I’ve really realized recently, whether it’s through your family or your friends or even professionally sometimes. And it’s it’s an it’s important to put yourself first and love yourself as much as you love others.
Rebecca Maakasa:
Yeah, that’s a really good sentiment. Filling up your own cup before you fill up another’s. And in this space of community work and volunteering, taking time for yourself is so important. And I don’t know, you call them like failures, but I think they’re stepping stones. I don’t think anything you’ve done could be considered a failure. I think when you have so many different interests and so much care for others, that leads you to be involved in so many different spaces. Um, there was something that you mentioned in 2020 about a podcast episode. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that?
Angeline Karvinkop:
Yeah. So it was in 2020 that when I was listening to a podcast called The Authentic Me by Mel Yu, and through that podcast I discovered an organization in Melbourne. It’s called Christmas on the Streets, and they support people experiencing homelessness in the city of Melbourne and what they do is they do street runs and provide snacks, meals and essential items like sleeping bags and blankets to people experiencing homelessness. They do regular check ins as well to have that one on one connection with them and to just sit down and get to know more about their journey as well. Through that I realized that you honestly never know what someone else is going through. And it’s important to show up every day with love and kindness to others.
Rebecca Maakasa:
Spot on. And we can also put in the show notes, links to support Christmas on the Streets and also to the podcast episode that you
mentioned. That’s a great thing about being in the podcast space. You can have a little network, ripple effect of inspirational stories. I wanted to take it back to your studies because I think that really branches out from everything that you’ve mentioned, whether it’s working with people experiencing homelessness or newly arrived persons who might need a bit of support as they settle into Australia. You study Youth Work and I wondered if you could share about that experience and what you’ve learned from studying
and how that sort of fits into your interests and passions.
Angeline Karvinkop:
I study Youth Work at RMIT and I started in 2022. so far it’s been an enjoyable journey. But there has been challenges where I want to admit that education is not my thing, honestly, and that’s part of why I’m doing it, to be honest, because I want to inspire other young people that even though the systems in place like might not always work in our favour, you can just you can still try your best
and show up.
Rebecca Maakasa:
Are there any particular programs or initiatives, whether they’re formal ones or not, that you see as really supporting young people maybe in Melbourne or across Australia that come to mind?
Angeline Karvinkop:
Yeah, there’s been heaps of different organisations that I’ve either been a part of myself or I’ve heard like heard from other people
through my networks.
Rebecca Maakasa:
Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Do any come to mind that you would encourage other young people to get involved with or connect with?
Angeline Karvinkop:
Yeah. So I currently volunteer for Centre for Multicultural Youth and I have been part of their volunteering program called UCan2 for the last year now. And a bit about the program that I’m involved in is it’s like a social connections program where the volunteers get to share a bit about their own experiences of growing up in Australia. If you’re from a migrant background or refugee background or, we
all have different like cultural backgrounds, right? So you get to share your experiences with the newly arrived young migrants and refugees. And some of the support they have is like helping the students in their like language school or TAFE. So what they what we do is we help them writing resumes, facilitating opportunities for young people to like be part of the community as well, whether it’s playing sport, taking them on excursions and yeah, finding support for themselves as well.
Rebecca Maakasa:
Amazing. So that’s called UCan2, (numeric 2). And that’s with the Center for Multicultural Youth, which do amazing work and I believe have many locations across Melbourne. I thought that was a good one to mention because people might be listening, wanting to access that support and initiatives. But also I think you mentioned they’re always looking for volunteers to help with those
programs, right?
Angeline Karvinkop:
Yeah, definitely. And I believe through my experiences through like getting to interact with those students, I’ve realized just how
focused and determined they are, and it’s helped me achieve some of the goals that I wanted for myself as well.
Rebecca Maakasa:
Amazing. And just before we finish up today, I wanted to see – was there any message of resilience or any reflections that you had that you wanted to share?
Angeline Karvinkop:
I think ultimately it’s letting everyone know that regardless of what you go through in life, like we all have, unfortunately, we all go
through negative experiences. It’s about overcoming them and being able to to come over to the other side and just moving past
them.
Rebecca Maakasa:
With some of these initiatives that we’ve mentioned and organizations that you can connect with, we’ll be sure to mention them in the
show notes as well. We all need a bit of support sometimes, especially as young people navigating work, career study, all different sorts of spaces. Angeline, thank you so much for your time today. I wish you all the very best and with your studies and I think you’ll
do amazing things, continue to do amazing things, I should say, in the youth work space and beyond.
Angeline Karvinkop:
Thank you so much.
Rebecca Maakasa:
Just quickly before we wrap up, I would like to mention that if you are thinking of sharing your story or you have something you’d like to say for the Stories of Community Resilience Project, do get in touch with me at [email protected] and I’d be delighted to support you no matter what audio experience you have. The program is here to share stories from culturally and linguistically diverse perspectives on the very broad topic of resilience, which can be interpreted so many different ways. Check out over 30 episodes we have out now. Thank you so much for your time today, listeners, and stay tuned for another episode of Stories of Community Resilience.
[END OF TRANSCRIPT]
To share your story, fill out the Expression of Interest form below, or email [email protected]