An annual race on colourful couches with wheels is taking place today in the Northern territory to mark nation ‘youth homelessness matters day’. More than 3,000 young people experience homelessness on any given night across the NT, with many of those couch surfing because they don’t have a safe place to call home.
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00:00We're at a bit of an unusual event here in Darwin today, we're about to see lots of colourful
00:07couches being raced down a path to highlight homelessness, youth homelessness in particular
00:14in the Northern Territory, which is a massive issue up here.
00:17But I'm with Gem Wood from Anglicare NT who can tell us all about it.
00:21Gem, how did this event come about?
00:23So since 1990 there's been Youth Homelessness Matters Day that's run nationally and in 2012
00:29Anglicare NT decided to get on board and race couches because we're seeing a lot of
00:35young people that were presenting homeless that was couch surfing across different places
00:40throughout the NT.
00:42And this is obviously a really big issue in the Northern Territory, we have one of the
00:45highest rates of youth homelessness.
00:47What does an event like this do to highlight the issue?
00:50Look, a community event raises awareness, we're all about raising awareness for over
00:553,000 young people that are homeless on any given night in the NT, with young people,
01:00community organisations and the community coming together to acknowledge that we've
01:04got an issue and it's an issue that's serious and needs to be addressed.
01:08And if there was one big solution that we really needed to look at what would that be?
01:13Look, we are calling for the Australian Government to have a stand-alone Child and Youth National
01:19Plan to address youth homelessness, child and youth homelessness, and advocating for
01:25additional funding to fund what young people and children need to be able to be safe and
01:32call somewhere home.
01:33Thanks so much.
01:35We are about to see lots of couches running down this path here, they're colourful, they're
01:40bright, there's lots of young people as well who are feeling a little bit nervous about
01:44how they're going to go in the race, but it's definitely a fun day to highlight a really
01:48prevalent issue here in the Northern Territory.