Towards the end of term one, year 11 students, Chloe and Jenae from our Goldfields sites travelled to Perth for their Pathways and Leadership camp. These camps are designed to expose Shooting Stars participants to experiences and opportunities they may not have access to in their home communities. During the first couple of days, over the weekend, the girls enjoyed kayaking, riding scooters at Elizabeth Quay, and having a great time at Timezone, with plenty of prizes to show for it. They also attended the Youth Conference held by the Aboriginal Health Council of Western Australia, a workshop at Bloom, Centre for Youth Innovation, and they met several inspiring individuals throughout the camp.
Rokiyah Bin Swani, the Pathways Coordinator said, “We’ve got some additional funding from Minara, a grant specifically for the Goldfields region, which is why we were able to bring the girls to Perth.” Chloe and Jenae agreed that within their communities, exposure to different career pathways is quite limited in comparison. “…so coming to something like the WA Youth Health Conference, I think is quite eye-opening because it lets the girls hear from other Aboriginal people as well as seeing what else is in the health area as a pathway”.
The full-day conference involved various workshops like dancing, food sampling, writing letters to future selves, and there were several Aboriginal health professionals speaking. One of these speakers, Marissa Verma from Bindi Bindi Dreaming, spoke about her family business and showcased different bush foods, discussing their benefits and how they can be used in cooking.
Another speaker who stood out to the girls was a nurse by the name of Soleil, who grew up in Broome and felt that she wasn’t the best school student, but she graduated from year 12, moved to Sydney to pursue dancing, then moved back to Broome and wanted to make a difference in the health system, and to give back to her community. One of the girls recalled the following sentiment from Soleil’s talk: “She talked about how she grew up with less but then as she grew, she made more out of it, she made something of herself.”
The MC, Scott Wilson kept things entertaining, and with an inspiring story of his own, he spoke about his creation, the Indigiverse – the first Indigenous comic book, which the girls each received a copy of.
The next day’s session at Bloom, was focused around small business and entrepreneurship. The girls had a great time, surprised by just how fun and engaging it was.
“That was fun, I thought it would be boring, not to lie, but it was actually good fun”.
Despite starting first thing in the morning, the girls jumped straight into the workshop and developed some excellent creative ideas for apps which could address issues relevant to their own lives and communities. The time flew, and while the session went for three hours, it only felt like one.
Chloe and Jenae, who both do SIDE (School of Isolated and Distance Education) at their schools, had plenty of positive things to say about the Shooting Stars programs.
“It’s helping kids.”
Chloe expressed how “Shooting Stars provides other opportunities, other than netball to girls. It’s a support, it’s different things in one.”
“Also Pathways, this camp, we went to the conference about health which could provide a job in the future.”
Jenae added, “last year, the leadership camp, we went around looking at all the different uni’s … so we looked at a bunch of different opportunities for schooling after year 12’s finished.”
We can’t wait to see what’s next for these girls and their education and career journeys!
