We Asked A ‘Seed Mob’ Volunteer How He Balances Volunteering With Study
And full-time work. And a social life.
Our generation cops a lot of heat for being “lazy” and “apathetic”, but we reckon that’s bullshit. As part of our I Give A Damn series, Uni Junkee is speaking to a bunch of young volunteers who give up their free time to do some good in the world. Take that, boomers.
—
As a proud Gamilaraay and Wiradjuri man, working full-time as a contracts administrator, studying his Cert IV in Building and Construction, all the while coordinating the NSW branch of Seed Mob, Kyle Lachlan is a little busier than your average 18 year old.
Kyle joined Seed Mob, the first ever Indigenous youth-led climate justice group, just over a year ago and is already leading others in the fight for a safe climate. We had a chat with him to find out exactly how he manages to stay on top of it all.
Uni Junkee: What kind of stuff does Seed Mob do?
Kyle Lachlan: At the moment our biggest campaign is to stop the fracking in the NT, which Michael Gunner is willing to go ahead with over 50 per cent of the NT still having licenses to frack. So what I do in Seed, I do regular calls up to Aboriginal people within NSW who have signed up or expressed interest for Seed Mob to volunteer. And organise things that give more education and training tools to educate more people on the dangers of fracking and mining.
How did you get involved with Seed in the first place?
My cousin was actually state coordinator last year and she got me involved by inviting me down to Powershift which was in Melbourne last year. It was the biggest get together of Aboriginal people recorded in history, all in one area for one purpose. It was groups like Seed Mob, AYCC, Pacific Climate Warriors, we had some Indigenous people from Canada, we had some Maori brothers and sisters and some Samoan and Tongan people came over. And I got involved with that last year.
What made you give a shit about this cause?
I’m with Seed Mob because Seed helps give our communities voices. So within a lot of the Northern Territory, our communities don’t have voices. But being with Seed, it helps me help other people. It gives me comfort knowing I’m helping other people by raising awareness within their communities.
What’s your secret? How do you balance uni/work/volunteering/social life?
I’m still trying to work it all out. So basically I work full-time, I work about 45 hours a week. I study three nights a week and then on my other nights I usually just chill out, make a few calls to people in my state and get behind rallies. And then on weekends it’s usually my time to just de-stress myself and chill out a bit. But come Monday again and I’m back to it.
What do you think are young people’s greatest concerns in 2018?
One thing that I’ve definitely realised since joining Seed Mob is that so many young community members actually care about culture and about community. We don’t want our country fracked away. We don’t want mining companies just to see money when they go out to the Great Barrier Reef. They’re cultural sites, they’re things that have a lot of history to us as Aboriginal people.
What do you think about the stigma surrounding millennials that claims us to be lazy/unconcerned/self-obsessed?
You have a lot of baby-boomers telling us that by our age they’d bought a house and stuff. I don’t think they realise that it’s 2018 and to buy a house is probably about 8-10 times more than what they paid back in their day. They could buy a house, but there are a lot of people our age who are struggling to buy three meals a day.
(Lead image: supplied)