Young Turks help Sydney’s Disadvantaged Youth

Developing creative and imaginative thought is at the core of Ogilvy’s Young Turks latest entrepreneurial partnership. Teaming up with The Sydney Story Factory, Ogilvy Sydney’s Young Turks have committed to tutoring marginalised young people, helping them to express themselves through creative writing.

 

Over the next few months 30 Ogilvy Young Turk volunteers will tutor creative writing programs every 6-8 weeks at The Sydney Story Factory including comedy writing, script and screen play development and poetry classes.

 

The Young Turks program was launched last year to develop Ogilvy’s young talent and to reinforce the company’s heritage of training and nurturing the future leaders of business. It is open to anyone within the Ogilvy network who is under 26 years of age or has less than three years of industry experience.

 

Ogilvy’s Head of Talent Management, Dave Sayer who directs the Young Turks program commented on the “tremendous spirit, enthusiasm and passion with which our young people have gone about this activity”. He said: “One of the Young Turks’ pillars is philanthropy - with a mantra to find ways to assist community based organisations using the skills sets they have, and the resources at their disposal within the agency. They identified The Sydney Story Factory as one that very much aligned with what we do as a company – tell stories.

 

“The natural synergies between a creative agency’s background and The Sydney Story Factory will make this partnership a winner and I am delighted we could support our young people to share their skills with some of Sydney’s disadvantaged youth.”

 

“We are teaching children to use expressive language and to find their own voice,” said Natalie Mitchell, Young Turks volunteer. “Creative thought is a powerful tool for these children to express and communicate their thoughts and feelings.”

 

Mitchell was one of the Young Turks tutors at a recent comedy writing class, and found the experience inspirational. She said: “The beauty of children’s writing is they are not bound by the constraints of adulthood, their imaginations run wild and they blend outrageous concepts and form them into beautiful stories.”

 

At the end of each program the children’s stories are bound into a book which they can take home to show their friends and family.

 

“The children were so responsive and the results amazing, it was a joy to see them leave with their very own piece of creative writing bound into a book format,” said Mitchell. “Anyone can become a leader with the right development, support and opportunity; by lending our support to the Story Factory we hope to share the opportunities we have been given with children who are less fortunate than us,” she said.

 

Ogilvy Sydney is part of STW Group, Australia’s leading marketing content and communications services group.