In March 2010 Andy, Jen, Jamie, Bahareh, Damian, Rayne, Imogen, Dale and Justin helped push our first two mobile food carts onto Federation Square. These nine young people were STREAT’s first class of trainees.

Right now 10,000 young people in Melbourne don’t have a place to call home. Most left school before year ten. If they were escaping family violence – the main cause of homelessness – they probably left home before they finished primary school. Most homeless youth, despite looking for work, are destined for long-term unemployment because they lack life skills and education and cannot get work experience.

It’s hard to stomach.

STREAT’s dream is to help one disadvantaged young person each meal time; breakfast, lunch and dinner – or 1095 each year. Those two food carts were just the start.

By 2012 we’d grown to 3 cafes and a coffee roasting business. Then we met entrepreneur and philanthropist, Geoff Harris. He recognised the transformational power of hospitality training for homeless youth and in 2013 gifted STREAT a $2.5 million site in Collingwood. Many other wonderful people have also invested and donated to help us start constructing this new site – our Home STREAT Home.

Once we move in, it will give us enough space to support and train 365 young people each year – three times more than we can now. We’ve made great progress building our new café, artisan bakery, coffee roastery, catering kitchen, youth training areas, event spaces, and offices. But they’re not finished just yet . . .

We’ll be in touch shortly with some delicious ways you can experience our new Home STREAT Home and positively impact the lives of disadvantaged young people. People like Jim, who shares his story below. Stay tuned.

Jim’s Story
"It’s not hard talking about my mental illness . . .
. . . but it is hard trying to find something to say that will help people understand it. I don’t really think I have enough words for that. It all just happens and it makes me a mix of things. Sad. Angry. I feel pretty alone. Confused. Alone mostly.

I had to stop going to school because of my mental health stuff. It got a lot worse because of the bullying. My school didn’t have the resources to help so I had to go. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me.

After a while I found STREAT. Until I came to STREAT I hadn’t finished anything. Not school. I’d never had a job. I’d never had a relationship. I’d never really done anything but go to hospital and be sick.

STREAT’s youth workers took it all in. They interviewed me, heard all the scary stuff about what had happened to me and just said “welcome”. Nothing made them reject me or hate me or kick me out and that felt good. I felt like a little bit of me came back every time I went to STREAT.

I still don’t know where I’ll be in the future, but now I know I can work and I can study and maybe everything else will start to make sense and maybe I’ll work it all out. I feel like that could happen now. I feel like I have a future.

I don’t feel alone anymore."

Help us by donating to our Home STREAT Home crowd funding venture or simply come in for a coffee at any of our venues – STREAT