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Community leadership in the Torres Strait

10 April 2013
Culture and Capability

Rellis Petro from Thursday Island has a new outlook on life after graduating from the Torres Strait Youth Leadership Program.

Rellis Petro from Thursday Island has a new outlook on life after graduating from the Torres Strait Youth Leadership Program.

Delivered by the Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA), the program is one component of a suite of regional capacity building initiatives available to Torres Strait and Aboriginal people residing in the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Area.

Rellis’ experience in the program was recently featured in the Closing the Gap: Prime Minister’s Report 2013.

The TSRA provides five Torres Strait Youth Leadership Program scholarships each year. The Scholarship involves a seventeen day residential course delivered by the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation.

The program covers leadership development, inter-personal skills, confidence building and networking. Participants are challenged personally and professionally in a safe, physically demanding learning environment.

Rellis signed up for the program because she wanted to learn about goal setting and making a clearer plan for her future.

She completed a number of outdoor challenges designed to increase her self-confidence, planning abilities, team work, networking, trust and resilience. The course included a visit to Parliament House and the Australian War Memorial.

“The course pushed me out of my comfort zone and was very beneficial for me to help define my future goals,” Rellis said.

“I discovered that nothing is ever too hard to do and that I should never give up on trying.”

The Australian Rural Leadership Foundation and the TSRA have a long partnership in developing

Find out more

The Torres Strait Youth Leadership Program is one of many Australian Government initiatives helping to build the capacity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, which is a critical component of Closing the Gap.

Find out more about successful programs working to close the gap in Indigenous disadvantage in the Closing the Gap: Prime Minister’s Report 2013.