14th December, 2004

SOUTH AFRICA: Evans spent a year in South Africa working with a World Vision project and at a HIV/AIDS orphanage.   "Our primary aim is to mobilise a generation of young Australians to respond to issues of poverty in the world. What that means is that we want people to be able to use their existing context within Australia to educate people about issues of poverty. So although we’re about educating those in the developing world, we’re also primarily about educating people in Australia." - Hugh Evans on the Oaktree Foundation

Twenty-one year old Melbourne university student Hugh Evans was recently awarded the title of Young Person of the World for 2004. Evans, the founder of youth-oriented humanitarian organisation the Oaktree Foundation, spoke with DAVID ADAMS...

Firstly, congratulations on your being named Young Person of the World. You’ve already won Young Victorian of the Year in 2003 and Young Australian of the Year in 2004. What do these awards mean to you?
“It encourages me that you can be recognised for working towards what are really just your dreams...I guess what was is so cool about it is that at every stage - Young Victorian of the Year, Young Australian of the Year and now this most recent award - is that it’s given us at Oaktree such an amazing opportunity to take our message to new people around the world. We actually used Young Victorian of the Year as a platform to launch Oaktree in Victoria and then, when it was Young Australian of the Year, we had 40,000 people log onto our website in one day...which was just awesome. In the last year, Oaktree has grown to have 1,500 volunteers all across Australia. With Young Person of the World, we were able to present our vision for Oaktree at the (Junior Chamber International World Congress) and we’ve already got young people now in the Philippines who are keen to have us over to spend time with them, we’ve got a team that are started in Johannesburg in South Africa, and there’s a girl in Boston in America and another girl in Birmingham in England that are all keen to start Oaktree groups. So it’s just been incredibly overwhelming.”

Can you tell us a little about what is the Oaktree Foundation and how it started?
“Sure. Oaktree is Australia’s first entirely youth-run and youth-driven development agency. When I was living in South Africa throughout 2002...I saw the importance of promoting education as an alternative to substance abuse and violence. I also saw the importance of giving young people the skills and equipping them to be able to make life choices...Secondly, while I was over there I saw how young people were mobilising those around them and they were really just serving the poor. I just thought to myself ‘Why can’t we in Australia establish an organisation that challenges young people like never before?’ Generally when young people get involved in aid or development work, it’s often in such a token way - they’re often asked to simply be miniature fund-raisers or to stuff an envelope or to rattle a tin. But we really believe that young people, even though they are young, have such amazing gifts to offer and have such amazing skills just by pure virtue of being born in Australia with all the opportunities that come with it.”

So is Oaktree about sending people overseas?
“Our primary aim is to mobilise a generation of young Australians to respond to issues of poverty in the world. What that means is that we want people to be able to use their existing context within Australia to educate people about issues of poverty. So although we’re about educating those in the developing world, we’re also primarily about educating people in Australia. Secondarily, if we are able to raise funds in the process, that’s fantastic and they are channelled through our projects. Our primary aim is not to send volunteers but we do send some volunteers and we take two study tours a year to enable people that are involved in Oaktree to have a greater understanding of where their support is going and to be able to come back and mobilise more people in Australia.”

What are your projects in developing countries?
“We’ve got projects in South Africa and projects in The Philippines and we’re exploring building partnerships with indigenous communities around Australia. We started in South Africa.”

How did you come to go to South Africa?
“Ever since I was 12 years old, it has been something that I was really passionate about...I went over to The Philippines when I was 14 and spent a night on a slum called Smokey Mountain which is a community built on a garbage dump. That night I was placed in the care of a guy who lived on the slum - a Filipino guy by the name of 'Funnyboy'. He took me to his house and that night as we lay on this concrete slab about the size of half of my bedroom with cockroaches crawling all over us and the stench of garbage...I had an epiphany and I just knew that I couldn’t return to Australia and act like these things didn’t exist. So I came back and I did some work in India as a 15-year-old - I went and lived for a year by myself and was able to work with Mother Teresa’s orphanage with projects in the slums of Delhi. Then as a 17-year-old I went and did some work with the United Nations in The Hague in The Netherlands. I finished my highschool and I got into my degree - I’m currently doing a law/science degree at Monash University - but I just knew that before I could go into my degree, I needed not just to see the work as I’d seen it in The Philippines and India but actually do it and get my hands dirty. So I wrote a letter at about 2am one morning to Lynn Arnold, who was at that stage the CEO of World Vision, and I said ‘Lynn, there needs to be a program that enables young people not just to see it but to do it’. And he wrote back and said ‘Hugh, we’d love to establish this youth ambassador program. We’ll even pay for your airfare so long as you can fund-raise the rest’. So I wrote to companies all over Australia and they provided over $25,000 so I could go over and be World Vision’s first ever youth ambassador. So I spent 2002 working in KwaZulu-Natal with a World Vision project and also a HIV/AIDS orphanage.”

Where did your interest in helping others come from?
“It has been a gradual process. It wasn’t as though at 12 years of age I knew I was going to start Oaktree. In fact when I was 12 I actually thought I’d have to be at least 50 years old before I could start something like Oaktree because everyone who I knew who was the leader of a big NGO was about 50 years old. I remember a speaker from World Vision came to my school and she spoke with such passion and conviction...She spoke with such truth and I just thought ‘Man, that’s something that I want to learn more about’. It was also about that time that I developed a faith in God and I guess it was also related to that. I felt, I guess, a real responsibility to also make a difference.”

Why do you decide to form Oaktree instead of continuing your involvement with World Vision or working through other aid groups?
“I think World Vision does a brilliant job in engaging young people but I think that NGOs in general don’t actually know how to engage young people because they don’t fully empower young leaders. What I mean by that is that I think young leaders are only genuinely empowered by having the opportunity to do it; making the mistakes and being given true responsibility rather than just token responsibility. If I was a young leader and I wanted to go and work with an NGO, I’d be given a very clear mandate of what I could and couldn’t do and so I wouldn’t actually have the freedom to be able to explore and make mistakes like I could if I was an employee of the business. I think that’s is a real limitation. I always think to myself why couldn’t young people in Australia raise as much funds and have as much influence in changing the world as anyone else...There’s no reason and I think that often young leaders in that context put limitations on themselves and are defined by their own beliefs rather than by the actual capacity they have. Although we at Oaktree stretch our young leaders to their absolute max and sometimes it gets very stressful I think it’s a really valuable process because we see the most amazing outcomes.”

LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCES: Evans' book 'Stone of the Mountain: The Hugh Evans Story' is about his experiences working overseas.   “I think my faith has been fundamental. We’re trying things that push us to our absolute limits and when you’re doing that, you can’t help but pray and say to God ‘I just don’t know how I’m going to do this, I just ask for your strength and not mine’ so I pray constantly." - Hugh Evans on his faith

You’ve recently written a book Stone of the Mountain: The Hugh Evans Story about your time in South Africa. Why did you write it?
“When I was living in South Africa - I don’t actually keep a journal all the time - but there was so much going on that I just had to write it all down. There were just the most amazing things going on and I kept a journal every day that I was there and ultimately that journal formed the backbone of the book...But it also outlines (my time in) The Philippines, India and why I went there and it talks about our future vision for Oaktree. Our purpose for the book is primarily to educate people about the reality of issues in the developing world so we’ve got what I call 10 development lessons intertwined, ranging from issues like HIV/AIDS through to racism right through to volunteerism here in Australia and what that would look like. Our second purpose was that we want to encourage young leaders to ultimately realise that anyone can make a difference. Part of the reason that I wrote it was that I didn’t want people to feel as though what we’re doing is actually unbelievable. I think that often we can put people up on a pedestal but we’re all on this path together and I think it’s important for young people to know that if they are focused and committed, man, they can do amazing things. Next week I’m started work on a second book which is a resource guide to take young leaders to the next level, to actually equip them with the kind of skills they need to go about doing it.”

What role has your faith played, given what you’ve been doing?
“I think my faith has been fundamental. We’re trying things that push us to our absolute limits and when you’re doing that, you can’t help but pray and say to God ‘I just don’t know how I’m going to do this, I just ask for your strength and not mine’ so I pray constantly. I also think that helps shape my world view. There are many ways you can approach the work you’re doing in development - some people approach it as if it’s good for their karma or something like that whereas I think actually the world is directional and God has a plan in the world. What we’re doing in development is hoping to serve those in need and giving them a taste of heaven in some respects. That’s the way I approach it. Fundamentally, my faith forms the backbone of the work I do. That said though, at Oaktree we welcome people of any or no faith because we don’t want to be exclusive, we want people to feel they can become involved regardless of where they stand.”

Where to from here for Hugh Evans?
“In the next few years I want to grow Oaktree to become a worldwide movement. But by the time I’m 25, I have to hand over leadership of Oaktree because we’re under 25 - that’s our cut-off age. I’m looking forward to that. Already we’re starting succession planning of who we can hand it over to. So at that stage I want to go and do some postgraduate study over in the United Kingdom and I’d like to learn more about both domestic and international politics because I’ve got an idea...about how we can reform politics to promote vision. I think that one of the main problems with our current system is that the people who ultimately rise to become the leaders of our nation lack vision because the system doesn’t foster leaders that have vision in the sense that those who do get sick and tired of the whole system (before) they become a leader...The last thing we need is a short-sighted country. It says in Proverbs ‘Where there is no vision, people perish’ and it’s something I see everywhere I go.”

For further information about The Oaktree Foundation, visit www.theoaktree.org