It breeds a disenchantment and disconnection that in turn often leads to a continuation of that terrible cycle.

Translated to the real world, these kids are easily sucked into crime, into repeating the bad lessons learned as they go through life and invariably, into choices that can have a significant impact on their health outcomes.

It’s a path that has disadvantage feeding into more disadvantage.

The wider community knows their plight, but it’s easy to keep it all at arm’s-length.

We empathise with the homeless kids who have to couch surf at mates’ places, we react with a nauseating shock when we hear about those kids who experience abuse – mental, physical and sexual – from an early age.

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But we are all in this together and somehow have to find ways to make a difference.

One organisation doing that on the Border is the Boys to the Bush program.

As its own philosophy points out, it’s about “assisting boys to become …  better sons, better dads, better mates, better employees and better blokes”.

These are humble aims yet carry such importance to these boys’ lives, to the lives of those around them and to all of us that we can only lend our full support to what they are doing.

This year its program has featured camps at Howlong and Lake Cargelligo for 168 boys, many of them living in out-of-home care arrangements.

They are a fraction of the estimated 50,000 kids across Australia doing like-wise.

That makes the theft of up to $5000 of Boys to the Bush’s equipment, including bikes bought through fund-raising, such a lousy thing.

Whoever thieved the items from an Albury High School shed might not have even know the significance of their haul.

But the point is, the loss is just that. Significant. Anyone with information shouldn’t hesitate to call the police.

And the culprits owe it to these boys to hand back what they stole.