Youth Portals play small but important role in bushfire relief

Datalink's Youth Portal is playing a small but important role in bushfire relief in Whittlesea, Nillumbik and the Shire of Yarra Ranges- areas where whole towns have suffered significant losses and many young people are currently in crisis.

Local councils have been very busy  disseminating information for crisis relief in their various areas, including these councils.


The Department of Human Services has released specific information for teenagers in crisis and fact sheets the Youth Portal is one of the best ways to deliver this information straight to young people in affected areas.

However reaching effected young people has been a problem. 

Some young people, their friends and families continue to use their local Youth Portals for support in these times.  Certainly the website traffic statistics would indicate this, with each of these Youth Portals experiencing an increase of over 400% in their average daily visits in the last week.

Many of the youth workers who normally run these Youth Portal websites are currently busy in the field directly assisting young people - some of whom have lost family members and homes.

These websites are important information tools.  Fortunately some of these portals have seen initiatives that have helped prepared for bushfire emergencies for some time, but not of this scale.  The Nillumbik Youth Portal website allows the general public to post expressive messages but typically requires content to be moderated.

Datalink understands this and through this crisis we have delivered website content updates and maintenance on behalf of these councils at no cost.

We like to think that with our staff volunteering some of our time we are assisting, in our own small way, the relief efforts.