Living without adequate infrastructures of care has been shown to dramatically limit the everyday lives of vulnerable people (Hall 2022), including young people. This paper explores the role of the Grow a Star program in providing opportunities to vulnerable youth. The Grow a Star program is ‘an innovative, youth mentoring and scholarship program that helps young people from disadvantaged backgrounds overcome the financial or generational obstacles that are preventing them from following their academic, sporting or artistic dreams’ (Grow a Star 2023). It is the first program of its kind to be designed and operated by a community housing provider, Home in Place. Funding Grow a Star involves sustained support from Home in Place (including through a staff salary sacrifice program), alongside resources from corporate sponsors, donations, and fund raising events. The paper draws on interviews with Grow a Star families (both the young participants and their carers, usually parents) and the program’s staff to explore how Grow a Star interacts with and becomes part of care infrastructures that support young people and their families. In so doing the paper considers how Grow a Star interacts with the caring labours of family and friends and other support services to connect young people with resources, training and opportunities that would otherwise be difficult or impossible for them to access. The paper ultimately reflects on the benefits and challenges of programs such as Grow a Star in overcoming entrenched patterns of inclusion and exclusion in contemporary Australia.
Grow a Star (2023) https://growastar.org/who-we-are Accessed 16/03/2023
Hall, S. M. (2022). For feminist geographies of austerity. Progress in Human Geography, online first.