World Youth International

There is no doubt that when we reflect on the past financial year, it has been one of the toughest years in WYI’s 34 year history. However, like many charities, we have dug deep, kept our overheads to a minimum and planned for a world that would soon reopen to international travel and volunteering.

One of our great achievements from the past financial year was the successful completion of our 5-year partnership with Computershare to upgrade the World Youth International School in Nepal so it could become a senior college. Over the past 5 years, we have seen enrolment numbers rise at the School from 300 to now 650 students! It has been amazing to work with Computershare’s charity arm, Change a Life to complete the expansion of the School and we are incredibly proud of our achievements.

In addition to the construction of the Senior College, we have been able to host two life changing treks to Nepal for Computershare employees from around the globe and generate additional funding to build the ‘Change a Life’ Boarding Home which will become home to 50 senior students studying their final graduation years at the WYI School. This fee-paying project will help take the WYI School one step closer to becoming self-sustainable and will be opened on November 2, 2022.

I would like to acknowledge the amazing contributions of our frontline healthcare workers who have put the needs of Australians before their own. Now that international borders are once again reopening, we have noticed an immediate surge in applications to travel overseas on our programs once again. We believe it is our duty to create a life changing program experience for our healthcare workers who have given so much over the past 2.5 years and let them know that we are thankful for their services. Our first Nurses in Action Program is scheduled to run in August 2022 to Kenya and we have 11 participants excited to lend a hand and serve communities across western Kenya.

In December 2021, WYI launched our latest Australian initiative, Healthcare Heartbeat which was created to provide essential support services to our frontline healthcare heroes who were showing signs of fatigue and burnout. We created a one stop website that packages a range of essential services to help not only our nurses and frontline workers, but their families and workplace as well. This new site is now an essential part of the services World Youth International can offer our healthcare workers.

As a family run, Australian based charity, we believe it is our responsibility to continue creating amazing, life changing experiences for Australians while supporting the needs of our partner organisations in Africa and Asia. Thank you to the thousands of people who have contributed to our organisation over the past 12 months.

Regards,

Terry Hoey