What we find though is many of the young people we show mercy to live with very little hope in their lives. They feel trapped, on the margins, and can often see little way of changing their circumstances, so options like drugs and alcohol, crime and violence begin to make more sense to them.

• Hope is a very necessary commodity for the well-being of human life, without it life can be very overwhelming, and many people will look in the wrong places to try and find it.
• Hope needs to be more than just wishful thinking, or fantasy thinking – I hope my ship will come in. One comedian stated, “Whenever my ship has come in, I have been at the airport.”
• Hope is an inner emotional belief or expectation that events or circumstances will become more positive. Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark – George Iles.

One of Concern Australia’s core values is hope – we work together to foster hope for the future of each individual because we understand them to be of infinite value. Charles L Allen, a famous Methodist Pastor from Atlanta, Georgia, once stated “When you say a situation or person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God.” When you view each individual we work with as having infinite value, and that they are never hopeless, then you can be more persistent and willing to work for them long term. When we have a hope for them, then we can hold this hope even when they don’t have any.

One worker spoke about how we need to always give them a sense of hope, even when they could not see it for themselves. When the people we work with cannot see their way through the tunnel to what is at the other end, our job is to try and provide them a view that will help them to persist and push through to the end of the tunnel. To do this requires a worker to maintain a consistent way of thinking and acting towards the young person at all times, despite what comes back towards them, and what choices the young person is making.

Here are some quotes from some of the young people we have worked with:

• “The worker kept planting the future, a hope, possibilities into my mind – much of which I only later was able to reflect upon and begin to take hold of for my life”
• “The worker maintained a belief in me, even when I didn’t have much, and even when I kept offending”
• “The worker didn’t judge me, push me away, reject me – no matter what I did”

We spend a lot of our time planting hope into our young people’s lives, by standing with them in the dark and troubled spaces, but always believing and holding onto hope for their futures. Our workers understand hope as even stronger than just a belief, as they see it as an “anticipation of a favourable outcome under God’s guidance” - based on the confidence that what God has done for us in the past, He will also do in the future. Our hope is that many more lives will be positively transformed through our work.

Bruce Tucker, Executive Director, Concern Australia