The Sebastian Foundation
The Sebastian Foundation was formed in 2013 by Guy and Jules Sebastian. After being in the public eye for ten years, and having dedicated a lot of his own time and money to various charities, Guy was struggling to see what these considerable efforts were adding up to, and thus, together with Jules, came to the decision to form their own charity, The Sebastian Foundation.
This coincided with the birth of their first son, the beautiful Hudson James. Knowing that they would do whatever they could to provide their child with the best upbringing they humanly could and recognising that there are many who were not born into an equally loving family. This coupled with an understanding of how important ‘family’ is to raising robust individuals and building strong communities led to the forming of the Foundation which spent the first several years doing work in the space of replacing a little bit of the warmth and benefit of family where it was missing.
During this time the Foundation has undertaken work in ten services for young girls, domestic violence shelters, hospitals, music therapy, mentoring programs for teenagers, women who have experienced domestic violence and more.
Through personal experiences with the Sebastian’s close family and friends with suicide, the work that the Foundation has done, and an observation of what is going on in the world around us it is clear that there is an extremely important job to be done in society today in protecting all young people from the world we have created for them.
The Sebastians especially recognise that the landscape has changed for children and is very different to the one they grew up in. Social media, online bullying and comparison are huge challenges to navigate and there is a need for a program that is specifically designed to tackle the issues they are facing now. These problems are prevalent and urgent. We don’t want to wait till it’s too late to make the changes children and teenagers need.
Of course this has a critical personal importance to the Sebastians, now as the parents of two young boys. Consequently, they made a change to the focus of the foundation, which will be to help to establish a foundation in young Australians, at the time in their life that they can be so rocked by external forces.
This doesn’t mean turning our back on the work we have done, and particularly we will continue to support services for families affected by domestic violence, especially where we can to support the significant mental health issues faced by children growing up in homes with violence.
Our pledge is that we will do what we can to ensure that young Australians feel encouraged and supported. We do this to build resilience and confidence, so that every person can grow and be their best.
Contact: Fiona Glenn
