Shea Spierings is an idealist and youth advocate who is passionate about social justice. He has undertaken roles as a national presenter with AIME, and as a Desk Officer with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This engagement is driven by his firm belief in the courage and value of young people, and their ability to influence and change the world in which they live. He is determined to represent the diverse interests, circumstances, and ideas of today’s young Australians and youth communities, remote and urban alike.
About Shea
Where are you from originally? What is your cultural background?
Well, I live in Brisbane at the moment. I was actually brought up in Rockhampton, central queensland and I grew up there … and then I spent my teenage years on the Sunshine Coast. My cultural background is Aboriginal and Dutch….My grandparents on my mother’s side – migrated from the Netherlands after the second world war and they were placed in Rockhampton.My father’s family – our nation is Gangulu is from central Queensland.
UN Youth Representation
What motivated you to apply for the role of the 2015 UN Youth Representative?
I’d never actually met a UN Youth Rep before…. The role has a lot of opportunities to go out there and meet people and engage with people, which I love doing, but it also has an opportunity to give a voice to the voiceless, or to the people who may not have previously had a voice but can have one. I personally just believe that everyone should have the opportunity to be heard, and if I can do that, then that’s a fantastic thing, and I think that in a way I wanted to get the role.
A lot of youth don’t necessarily feel that anyone will listen to them, or that someone will take their message to the broader community or that they could actually be a part of something bigger and therefore they sort of isolate themselves. But if I can prevent that and show people that that’s not necessarily the case… that’s just a real honour. And that’s why I want to do this role – for the opportunity to show people that they can actually connect, or make sure that people are actually connecting, I think would be really cool.
What excites you the most about being this year’s UN Youth Rep?
Honestly, it’s pretty simple: for me it’s just about getting out there and meeting people – I’m really excited about that. I’ve previously worked in mentoring and presenting – there’s something really invigorating about it – coming back from talking to a community of young people. Because you see the hopes and dreams that they have, and you think that’s really exciting, and you think ‘I can’t wait ‘til they actually put that into play and get that running because that’s gonna change the world’ and I just find that really, really exciting. And there’s gonna be other things of course –
going to New York’s going to be really cool, I’ve never actually been there before. And that’s just an upside of things – the fact that I get to go around and meet people from really diverse backgrounds and travel the country – I think that’s pretty amazing.
The year ahead
What are the goals you have set out to achieve as the UN Youth Rep?
Obviously engagement is really important. A part of my role is measuring my levels of engagement. So, I’m hoping to get some pretty high levels of engagement this year, to successfully engage with people via social media and face-to-face. And I’m hoping to get the numbers into the tens of thousands. This year we’re actually going to do a 120 day roadtrip around the country, which is something that hasn’t been done before, because this’ll allow me to engage with alot more people and visit smaller rural communities. So I’m hoping to really take the engagement levels through the roof this year, spread sustainable change and processes, and just explain to people that they can be the change they want to see in the world, and that they’re better off having a go and there’s no need to wait for anything to go about making that change.
Last year, Laura John’s theme/tagline was “The Great Perhaps”. Do you have a theme for this year? If so, what is it?
I’m still thinking about it, but something I’m particularly interested at the moment is this idea of global citizenship. I think it’s a really interesting…because I’m curious to see how people feel about the idea of sharing a planet…. If we can actually discuss the idea of mobilizing to create social change, not just in our small communities but also to link up with some bigger, broader communities I think that’s really interesting, I think it’s a discussion young people can have now. We’ve got plenty of opportunities to be in contact with people all around the world so why not have it? Because having contact with someone on the other side of the world may actually allow you to better your own community and I think that’s something young people need to be aware of.
Issues facing young Australians
What causes/issues are you most passionate about? Why?
Some of the big issues are gonna be employment, education, these sorts of things. For me, the issue that we’re should be trying to address is why don’t certain groups in the youth community have access to opportunities, a good example would be the remote Indigenous communities where we see there is not really much to do. There are a few bridges that need to be built in quite a few areas and I don’t really see any current policies going that way at the moment. We need to think critically about how to address these issues because maybe these ideas about creating economic growth in this particular area is not actually going to solve the problem, maybe it wont necessarily address the drug abuse or some of the broader systemic issues that are in that particular community because these issues stem far deeper and go further back and they can’t be addressed superficially.
What is your response when you hear people describing our generation as being apathetic, lazy, narcissistic and ignorant?
To me, it’s a really pressing issue-the older generation being pessimistic about the younger generation. Because I think we see it playing out in all levels of the great Australian parity. Youth don’t really fit in in a lot of places; we’re not really accounted for when it comes to the big issues, even though youth issues are very much a part of it and often inform a part of the bigger issues.
We need to think about the way we actually treat our youth because what the youth go on to become, can either be good or bad for everyone else and for even themselves – it’s about everyone. I’m really thoroughly against this pessimism we see and hear in society. I don’t even like when people say things like ‘oh there’s hope for humanity’ when people say something nice or they see a nice article, because as far as I’m concerned there are amazing beautiful things going on all the time, and if they’re not seeing them it’s because they’re not looking for them. It’s not because they’re not happening and I find that ignorance really quite offensive because they’ll carry that ignorance and they’ll use that against people for no reason. And I think that’ll only cause more problems.
What message or advice would you like to give to young people wanting to create social change?
When I go and talk to people the thing I like to sort of start of with is asking ‘if you could say anything to the world, and if the whole world was listening and you had one shot, one chance… to you what actually matters?’ and it’s about trying to get people to think about what actually matters to them…
I think it’s as simple as trying and I’ve done it plenty of times myself – you sort of start off with this really big dream in your head and you think ‘this’ll be great’ and now I’ve just got to get the rest of the world to listen to me now, and then you quickly realize that the world’s probably not going to listen to you just yet. So you’ve gotta start off doing something a bit smaller and you need to really pace yourself sometimes, and that can be really quite difficult. So it’s about understanding that maybe you’ve gotta take your time to achieve what you want to achieve, because as fantastic as your idea is you have to convince everyone else that it’s important as well.
I think young people need to be resilient in that sense, you know we need to be aware that we need to keep trying, and just go another way, try a different path. But don’t even stop working on it and at the same time – I mean your ultimate, where you’re gonna end up in life is never very clear – you know some people have these set plans, and they often don’t go that way anyway. But it’s a matter of just trying, and just having a go at things, and you learn things as you go and you’ll change your mind as you go. Sometimes young people have to be resilient and have to be aware that- there’s never a good time to give up – there’s never an opportunity to do that really. And it shouldn’t be about that, and sometimes it’s also about surrounding yourself with the right people and creating an environment that you need to actually be the person you want to be.
Social Catalysts 