Buslink Drives Home Important Message with Local Youth

Buslink Drives Home Important Message With Local Youth
Secrets cast with students from Clontarf Academy and Buslink’s Colin Majid at the opening show on 20 April 2021.

Northern Territory school and urban bus operator, Buslink helped drive home a critical message to Darwin youth about the serious consequences of drug use by ensuring students were able to attend the youth dance theatre production, Secrets.

Buslink supported a goal to ‘save at least one life’ when it delivered more than 1200 middle and senior school students to the live performances.

No ordinary show, the Slide Youth Dance Theatre production painted a disturbing picture of how a young boy’s life took a downward spiral after he became hooked on the drug ice.

Students from across Darwin and Humpty Doo were able to listen to the important messages being shared and take part in a Q&A with the cast and special guests who spoke about their own experiences and recovery processes.

Community Engagement Manager Colin Majid said as Buslink worked hard to develop programs that benefited local youth, it was important to make the show as accessible as possible.

“We wanted to encourage as many kids as we could to get along by helping to remove potential financial and travel barriers by providing buses,” he said.

“Slide’s work is renowned for effectively communicating critical messages to young audiences triggering vital discussions, and this is something we’re out there doing daily with our schools’ engagement program – working to mentor kids about choices and consequences, be it their safety and behaviour around buses or just life in general. 

“Some of the scenes were pretty confronting, the show is not sugar-coated by any means, and brought me to tears on a couple of occasions. The Q&A gave a rare chance to hear from recovering addicts who took the kids on their own journey, leaving them with the most important message ‘don’t take this road’.”   The four performances at the Darwin Entertainment Centre ran from 20-22 April.