JRS Australia’s Youth Ambassador Award is a longstanding initiative to encourage young peoples’ engagement and participation on forced displacement, and to help students develop leadership skills in social justice issues. 

In 2019, the Award made a return after a five-year hiatus. 

Based on inquiry-based learning, students were asked “If you found yourself in the footsteps of a person seeking asylum, how would you like to be treated?” 

Students produce a multimedia product of their choice to engage with this question.

The experience of this project should enable students to recognise their role in society and responsibility to respond with compassion and solidarity to the plight of these people and hopefully change the pervasive attitudes towards refugees and people seeking asylum.

The JRS Ambassador Award is currently offered in Jesuit schools. In 2019, six Jesuit and Companion School Australia Education (JACSA) schools offered and promoted the Award: St. Aloysius College, St.Ignatius Riverview,  St. Ignatius Geelong, Xavier Catholic College Hervey Bay, John XXIII and Loyola Watsonia. 

In 2020 the JRS Youth Award will be offered to all JACSA schools.  Two of the schools, St. Ignatius Riverview and Xavier College, have embedded the Award into the curriculum and each student in the cohort will undertake the Award as a formative assessment task.

To learn more about this award, please email: anne.nesbitt@jrs.org.au