We engaged with the Kimberley community to understand the needs of young people

Binarri-binyja yarrawoo (BBY) is the backbone organisation for Empowered Communities East Kimberley (ECEK), a collective impact initiative for Aboriginal-led reform in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia.

Across the Kimberley, young people may face persistent and complex challenges. What may work for young people in Perth does not always work for young people in the Kimberley. So many government and supporting organisations across WA are changing how they support youth to empower local communities to define their aspirations and create solutions that work for them.

Wyndham, the Kimberley’s oldest town, has a strong sense of community with local families who have a deep connection to their diverse cultural identities. More than a third of Wyndham’s population is aged under 25.

BBY facilitates joint decision-making with the Wyndham community as part of its Regional Development Agenda. The Wyndham community identified youth safe spaces as an opportunity to positively respond to challenges facing young people in Wyndham. BBY engaged us to work alongside it and the Wyndham community to develop further ideas about what initiatives to support youth safe spaces could look like, based on what matters most to the young people of Wyndham.

Supporting the wellbeing of young people requires deep understanding of place and the aspirations of local young people. We worked with a Project Reference Group mostly based in Wyndham. This group identified ways to hear the thoughts of local young people, their families and communities through formal activities like school visits and workshops as well as informal opportunities like footy training for the Wyndham Crocs. This group also helped to make sure we had the right cultural protocols in place so stakeholders would feel comfortable talking to us.

Our team spent three and a half days in Wyndham, listening to and recording the thoughts of community members, through yarns, structured workshops and drawing. Through our discussions with young people in community, it became clear that youth safe spaces was not just about creating a safe physical space; it was also about uplifting families and local services, and creating genuine training pathways for young people aligned to their interests. During our consultation, the Wyndham community identified six initiatives to address the local priority of youth safe spaces.

We involved a highly experienced First Nations woman to lead engagements, fostering cultural understanding, respect and effective collaboration with the community.

As a woman from the Kimberley region, she brought valuable insights into the nuances of the local culture, traditions and perspectives, enhancing the initiative’s authenticity and avoiding cultural insensitivity. She acted as a bridge to facilitate safe discussions and build trust between the project team and the community.

Our team approached consultation with sensitivity, acknowledging and incorporating Indigenous values, and created meaningful and sustainable partnerships that respect the unique heritage of First Nations peoples.

The result was a final report that identified priority community initiatives.

At a project level we thought carefully about our role, and how we could provide value – particularly as a non-Indigenous, non-local consulting firm.

In discussion with BBY, we put working in partnership at the centre of how we delivered work. We worked closely with the BBY team, including joint responsibility for organisation and delivery of engagement activities – so we could learn from each other. This included sharing ideas about stakeholder planning, project management and report writing for government audiences.

At a community level, many First Nations people are justifiably sceptical about engagement with external groups. They experience consultation fatigue, needing to tell their story and sharing their ideas but with nothing changing on the ground. By delivering this work in partnership with BBY, the consultation and discussion that started during this project would continue because of BBY’s role and connection to the local community.

Further work by BBY is now underway to unlock additional funding for Wyndham to implement these priority community initiatives.