Message with momentum: Oaktree Foundation road trip ambassador Smeetha Jayakumar hopes the trip will get people thinking about foreign aid ahead of the federal election in September. Picture: Carlos Furtado
SMEETHA Jayakumar is on the road to make a difference. The Glenwood resident is among more than 100 ambassadors who will travel from Sydney to Canberra on the Oaktree Foundation's Roadtrip to End Poverty, a youth-led campaign to pressure the federal government to honour a promise to increase foreign aid.
Miss Jayakumar is a second year law and political science student at Macquarie University.
She said the government spent 0.35 per cent of gross national income on foreign aid and had committed to increasing this to 0.5 per cent — 50¢ in every $100.
"The Oaktree Foundation is currently targeting the Asia-Pacific because [of the level of] extreme poverty in that region," Miss Jayakumar said.
"The plan was to halve that by 2016-2017, but the government is actually decreasing foreign aid at the moment instead of increasing it."
Miss Jayakumar said being ambassador for the Roadtrip involved training for the week of conversation with people throughout NSW on the way to Canberra, where a summit will be held.
"I love to talk to people and I'm very politically interested so it's a good opportunity especially for someone who studies politics," she said.
"We'll be going on the trip from March 9 to 16, trying to create awareness of what the government is currently doing with foreign aid and what the opposition is offering especially because it's an election year.
"I'm really looking forward to it."