By KATH GANNAWAY
HEALESVILLE university student Anne-Marie Reddan is truly an inspiration.
The 19-year-old who went to school in Marysville, Healesville and Mount Evelyn, has spent much of this year working with the poor, sick and imprisoned in the village of Wairaka near Jinja in Uganda.
Anne-Marie is hardly a typical teenager, but in many ways she is typical of a growing number of young people who, as part of their secondary schooling, gap year, or university courses are moving outside the comfort zone of their Yarra Valley lives to help in third-world countries.
She fell in love with Uganda and its people when she first visited at 16 with her family and returned for six months during a gap year in 2012 working initially with the Village of Hope project with Hope Builders.
Anne-Marie is studying International Development and as part of her stays in Uganda has worked in aids baby homes, with HIV women’s groups where she set up links groups in Australia.
Asked to give a talk with an encouraging message to an HIV group, she said the organisers like people to give a message of pain and talk about how that pain was overcome. “The problem is, it makes me realise how lucky I am that (I have) never in my life experienced pain like these women,” she said.
She rejects the idea that the problems of the world are so far away and so big that Australians can’t help and says she would like to see more people of her age volunteering to help others.
“I want to set up my own NGO (Non Governmental Organisation) when I’m finished university with a focus on empowering people to help themselves instead of having hand-outs. I want to provide ways for them to be sustainable.
“My goal for next year is to secure some land and keep studying so that in two years I can get a one-way ticket and stay for a while,” she added with a huge smile that radiates a remarkable self-confidence, trust in those around her and joy at being where she is.
Anne-Marie, and young people like her, are inspirational.
