2nd April, 2005

SALLY HOLT

When Hugh Evans surveyed the debris of a tsunami-devastated school in Banda Aceh recently, it somehow reminded him of his own school. It seems like an incongruous comparison.

Carey Grammar, where Evans spent his secondary school years, is tucked securely in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Kew - it’s a solid, safe, and somewhat privileged place of education.

In contrast, the Aceh school was literally torn to shreds. Buses and trucks had been hurled into classrooms; books were strewn across the road, and in a stench-filled playground lay a pile of bodies.

AFTER THE TSUNAMI: Evans meets the locals in Banda Aceh. “I was really asking God what He wanted us to do. We’d come up with some ideas of partnering with other community development specialists and getting an aid convoy into Aceh. I knew we had to respond in some way, but I kept praying and asking God if this is what He wanted to happen,” says Evans.

While there was nothing safe or solid about this school, it reminded Hugh Evans - once again - of where he’d come from and how fortunate his life had been.

It’s just one of the convictions that has driven the ‘Young Australian of the Year’, and most recently ‘Young Person of the World’ recipient, to establish the Oaktree Foundation - an entirely youth-run organisation that focuses on sustainable educational initiatives in the developing world.

Since receiving these awards, and the added recognition and responsibilities they attract, Evans’ timetable is a tight one. But when the Boxing Day tsunami hit, he didn’t have to think twice before offering to help.

“I was really asking God what He wanted us to do. We’d come up with some ideas of partnering with other community development specialists and getting an aid convoy into Aceh. I knew we had to respond in some way, but I kept praying and asking God if this is what He wanted to happen,” he says.

Within a few weeks, The Oaktree Foundation along with ‘ARMS’ (Australian Relief and Mercy Services) and ‘Partners’ - both Christian relief and development organisations - kicked off a ‘10 day $10 challenge’ urging young Australians to donate $10 between 4th and 14th of January.

Six tonnes of aid goods were gathered and trucked into Banda Aceh before the team began working on establishing toilet and water purification systems.

While he had visited some of the world’s most under-privileged, war-ravaged and poverty-stricken countries, nothing quite prepared Evans for the devastation of Aceh.

“It was almost overwhelming. I saw a pile of mud where 1000 people were buried, and under a bridge a young guy was pulling bodies from the water. The reality of what had happened hit me very hard,” he recalls.

A second cargo has recently arrived in Aceh and the Oaktree Foundation’s tsunami relief will now concentrate on exploring key partnerships with schools in Sri Lanka. It’s hoped that pilot program can soon be established.

Evans’ recent journey to Aceh is part of a much larger one that started when he was around 12-years-old. Though his family had stopped going to church many years earlier, he smiles as he recalls how God managed to still “get through” to him.

“I started going to a Christian youth camp called Mill Valley Ranch at Tynong North (Victoria). One day, I was talking a leader about the fact that my parents were about to divorce. I was pretty distraught so we talked and prayed together, then read Psalm 27: ‘The Lord is my light and salvation - whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life - of whom shall I be afraid?’ As I walked outside, and looked at this amazingly blue sky, I had an overwhelming sense of God’s presence in my life…there was an understanding that God was someone with whom I could have a personal relationship.”

From then on, the young Hugh Evans wondered what God’s calling was to be on his life. He didn’t have long to find out.

Two years later, inspired by a visiting speaker from World Vision, he immediately knew immediately that “he wanted to get involved”.

Travelling to the Philippines for some first-hand experience, it was a night in the slums of ‘Smokey Mountain’ - where survival is eked out on a rubbish dump - that permanently flipped his perspective.

“I was placed with a family who had a son named Sonny Boy; we were the same age but he was covered in tattoos and was the leader of a gang. After cooking a meal together on the ground, I presumed we’d sleep in some kind of bedroom, but instead, the pots and pans were cleared away and seven of us just lay down on a small concrete slab.”

Predictably, Evans didn’t sleep a wink. Covered by crawling cockroaches and surrounded by reeking garbage, he knew he couldn’t return to Australia and “pretend none of this existed”.

The following year he applied for a scholarship to study in the Himalayas, and while there, spent time in India. His journal entry reads: ‘The greatest injustices I witnessed this year happened not when comparing the poor of India to the rich of India, but upon arriving home’.

“I couldn’t understand why Australians were complaining about not having the latest mobile phone when I’d just seen a man begging for 20c in the markets,” he remembers. “He only had stumps for arms, no legs, and a piece of rubber tied around his pelvis to stop the skin from scraping away. I felt so helpless and disillusioned.”

But it was the time spent in India that allowed the 15-year-old to grasp a crucial notion. “I knew that we, as young people around the world, could make a difference…that we could be committed to being a voice against these injustices.”

However within a couple of years, Evan’s was facing his own personal ‘injustices’ when his step-brother - who was also his best friend - tragically took his life. Suddenly confusion reigned. “I couldn’t understand why it had happened - why a life would be considered not worth living,” he reflects.

His uncertainty only deepened when a few weeks later, the father of a close friend also committed suicide. “I was so overwhelmed with my own grief that I couldn’t support my friend…and I kept asking God ‘Why did you allow this to happen?’.”

Through a long and painful grieving, Evans says he learned much that year about the ‘sovereignty of God’.

Since then, his journey has received gradual and growing attention: work in the rural, AIDs-ravaged communities of South Africa; the establishment of the Oaktree Foundation, and the world-wide recognition as young person who is determined to make a difference.

Fortunately, Evans appears to be blessed with extraordinary energy. Though completing a law/science degree at a Melbourne university, his load of extra-curricular commitments is staggering.

With the new semester barely underway, he is presently on his second trip to South Africa this month, hosting an Oaktree Foundation study tour before delivering a keynote address and seminar to the 2005 World Congress of Family Law and Children’s Rights in Cape Town.

But if Evans enthusiastic energy carries him, it’s a sense of abundant hope that drives him.

“In Aceh, I visited a coastline that had been completely destroyed and I saw one man working alone. Slowly, one pole at time, he was rebuilding his house. We can change the world by our actions of justice, compassion and love for others. Let’s do it.”