Issue Four:
Ziyan Tejani
Part of the role of the community sector is to promote and foster opportunities for community leadership. In particular, many youth organisations, local councils, and institutions provide programs that support young people to contribute to their communities and to develop leadership skills. One such youth leader is Ziyan Tejani, a Western Sydney youth advocate, mentor, university student, New Colombo Plan scholarship program ambassador, and policy contributor. His work spans mentorship, advocacy, collaboration, and policy engagement, and helps to empower underrepresented young people to build their confidence and skills, and access opportunities such as international scholarships. A key focus of these initiatives is ensuring that young people from underrepresented backgrounds (including carers, students with disability, and those from underrepresented communities) have access to support systems, mentorship, and opportunities that strengthen participation and confidence. These approaches value lived experience and encourage young people to communicate what genuinely empowers them and what support works best for their communities. The initiatives prioritise the voices and lived experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse young people, refugees, and other underrepresented communities in Western Sydney, and aim to ensure that policy decisions are informed by the perspectives of the communities themselves.
“I’m very excited by what my generation can do… I see a lot of passion and drive to rise up as leaders and take on some of the big issues that are facing local communities, the nation and the planet.” – Ziyan Tejani
Demonstrating to young people and policymakers alike that young people are capable decision-makers and contributors to social change rather than passive recipients of support (Martínez et al, 2017) reflects the youth empowerment approach that underpins these initiatives. The public speaking workshops, mental health initiatives, peer-led programs, and student engagement campaigns help young people recognise their strengths, challenge their own insecurities, and actively contribute to policies that build their communities (Jennings et al, 2006). This approach can also be seen through contributions to submissions, collaboration with ministers and government agencies, and participation in student representative roles in regional advisory networks in Western Sydney. These mentorship and policy engagement efforts extend to the New Colombo Plan scholarship program, in which Ziyan’s peer leadership has aided students from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds to apply for competitive international scholarships. Many of these students have in fact successfully secured scholarships and studied internationally. This advocacy work has helped young people recognise their potential and integrate their own perspectives into decisions which are then enacted in policy.
These initiatives also prioritise the importance of embedding lived experience in policy implementation and program delivery. This is done by ensuring that young people’s personal experiences, identities, and perspectives are central to the way programs, advocacy, and community initiatives are designed and delivered. These initiatives centre the perspectives of culturally and linguistically diverse young people, and recognises how structural disadvantage can affect confidence and participation. The mental health programs also recognise the importance of lived experience in understanding issues such as loneliness, social isolation, and the impacts of technology and social media on young people. At Macquarie University, Ziyan’s contribution to mental health initiatives included awareness campaigns, Mental Health First Aid training, and peer-support programs designed to increase accessibility and reduce stigma. In this space, having a peer leader with lived experience can help to destigmatise attitudes relating to mental health and allow the young people to connect with facilitators through their shared experiences (Wainwright et al, 2025). These initiatives were shaped by the real experiences and needs of young people, and helped to create supportive peer environments where students felt understood, respected, and connected.
These initiatives have also received recognition through youth leadership and community impact awards, including the 2026 Top100 Future Leader list featured in the Australian Financial Review Graduate Guide, and the Hills to Hawkesbury Community News. These recognitions highlight Ziyan as a contributor to broader social impact work through his commitment to social justice, mental health, youth empowerment, and community connection. Ultimately, these examples demonstrate how youth-led advocacy, lived experience, and peer-based support can improve access to opportunities and strengthen participation among underrepresented young people.
Evidence in practice
Although empowerment is considered to be an abstract, multi-layered and complex concept, general consensus has been made as to some of its characteristics. Empowerment can be both an active continuous process and an outcome at both an individual and collective level, which can be applied to different fields and most notably refers to people, groups or communities gaining control and power over their own lives (Martínez et al, 2017). Particularly, youth empowerment has been used interchangeably with other terms such as youth leadership and youth activism, and has come to describe the progression of young people gaining awareness, control and confidence over their own decisions and futures. (Martínez et al, 2017; Jennings, 2006).
People who have acquired firsthand experience, knowledge, and insights into a particular situation or phenomenon are said to have lived experience and are therefore experts of their own experiences. Embedding lived experience into research and programs is a valuable process whereby these individuals can offer a unique perspective into the experience that others studying these phenomena cannot. This approach is gaining popularity in different research areas (Reid, Flowers & Larkin, 2005) however more work is needed to integrate lived experience in senior leadership positions (Byrne, Stratford & Davidson, 2018).
References
Byrne, L., Stratford, A., & Davidson, L. (2018). The global need for lived experience leadership. Psychiatric rehabilitation journal, 41(1), 76-79. Available from https://whariki-ao.nz/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/2018GlobalNeedLELeadership.pdf
Jennings, L. B., Parra-Medina, D. M., Hilfinger-Messias, D. K. & McLoughlin, K. (2006). Toward a critical social theory of youth empowerment. Journal of community practice, 14(1-2), 31-55. Available from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Deborah-Parra-Medina/publication/233013252_Toward_a_Critical_Social_Theory_of_Youth_Empowerment/links/00b495187b7cc8d799000000/Toward-a-Critical-Social-Theory-of-Youth-Empowerment.pdf
Martínez, X.U., Jiménez-Morales, M., Masó, P.S. & Bernet, J.T. (2017). Exploring the conceptualization and research of empowerment in the field of youth. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 22(4), 405-418. DOI: 10.1080/02673843.2016.1209120
Reid, K., Flowers, P. & Larkin, M. (2005). Exploring lived experience. The Psychologist, 18(1), 20-23. Available from https://cms.bps.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-11/ipa05.pdf
Wainwright, C., Sofija, E., Riley, T., Tudehope, L. & Harris, N. (2025). Examining the role of mental health lived experience advocacy in shaping the personal outcomes of youth advocates: A scoping review. Children and Youth Services Review, 171, 1-16. Available from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740925000659?__cf_chl_tk=J_qdaaZOl0EHh8k17HJvSlJhXzg1kwPN3tkN76BvNGU-1779864419-1.0.1.1-gAbvuEuFhKWLswuU35jN038o0Dji7xytEPiXxYlcuXk
