From South Australia to Canberra, the Sammy D Foundation travels to schools around the country trying to spread the word on the dangers of teenage violence. This week they travelled to our region and spoke to teens and parents on the impacts of bully and alcohol and drug-fuelled violence.

Sam Davis was just 17 years old when a party with friends turned fatal. Sam was a sporting enthusiast in talks with AFL clubs about entering the upcoming drafts, he was well-liked and always there for his friends, but one punch cut his life short.

“It can happen to anyone, that night in the hospital we were saying ‘this doesn’t happen to us, this happens to other people’ that’s when we found out that anyone can be the other people,” Neil Davis, Sam’s dad and Founder of the Sammy D Foundation.

More than 1,700 people came to Sam’s funeral and mourned the life that could have been. Knowing Sam was on the path to making something of himself, his parents wanted to ensure that what happened for Sam wasn’t in vain.  They started the Sammy D Foundation as a way to distract his friends, so they wouldn’t do something to seek revenge while also spreading awareness of the dangers of youth violence.

Now, 15 years later the foundation has shared their story with thousands of students, teachers and parents, just last year they spoke to 30,000 young people about harm prevention. Mr Davis says while teachers and the police can warn about the dangers of what can happen, they then go into the schools and say what did happen.

“For 50 minutes you can hear a pin drop, but it opens up conversations with the parents. We don’t want young people to stop having parents, we don’t want parents to be too scared to have a party because if kids aren’t having a party at home where are they doing it?” says Mr Davis.

Alongside starting the foundation Sam’s mother Nat Cook sought to make changes through another channel. She changed her career path from an intensive care nurse to a governmental role, she is currently the South Australian Minister for Human Services.

Through tailored presentations and workshops, they work through factors that can lead to teen violence and discuss the best ways to avoid it. They cover topics like building respectful relationships, breakdown the stereotypes of toxic masculinity, the harms of bully, drugs and alcohol and the importance of mental well-being.

Here in the Canberra region, Calwell High and the Queanbeyan network schools have received a visit thanks to Together4Youth. The spokesperson for the organisation Andrew Turvey says that they work with schools to implement well-being programs that cater for emotional learning needs. He says developing those soft skills is just as important and they want to deliver opportunities that academic programs often don’t offer.

“The Sammy D program is vital in this demonstrating to students the consequences of a single action and allowing them to explore how they can make better choices learning from the experiences of the Davis family,” says Mr Turvey.

When looking at what could happen, Mr Davis says they want all the young people to understand how easy it would be to be the other person as well. He says it can be hard to stop yourself when you are angry, that’s where friends come in.

“If you see your mate getting that angry, you know, they’re gonna hit someone, you have to stop that. If you’re out and you can see troubles gonna start, you’re gonna grab your friends and leave,”

He says the foundation gets emails from students sharing stories of the impact that have made. Students who have stopped their friends from joining a fight by asking, don’t you remember what happened to that Sammy D kid?

“One school in country, South Australia. We first started going in nine years ago, they had 162 incidences in that year…We’ve been going back every year and last year, they had four,”

A number of Sam’s friends have been involved with the foundation since its inception. Education Manager Jessie Bennie was also a friend of Sam’s, while most employees now never met Sam, they are just as passionate. Mr Davis says the dedication of the team is what makes their work continue, and be one step closer to ensuring no other family has to deal with a loss like that of Sam.

“We’re never going to stop it completely; we want to lower youth violence. We want people when their kids go out at night, not to worry if they are going to come home, that’s the main thing.”

Find out more about the work of the Sammy D Foundation; sammydfoundation.org.au

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