Alinta Ward is 15 years old, and is one of 26 young people to attend Camp Mibunn – our first camp for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth.

Alinta has big plans for her life – and that’s because of encouragement from her Indigenous elders and youth pastors in Logan.

“I want to change someone’s life in a big way. I think I want to be a social worker because there aren’t a lot of Indigenous foster parents. A lot of Indigenous kids don’t get looked after… so I think being there for them and telling them my testimony would change their life,” she says. (more…)

If you stepped foot into Cherbourg Primary School, you’d be immediately swarmed by kids. They’d drag you to the playground to teach you how to play marbles. Or they’d request piggyback rides so they could chase their friends around. More than anything, they’d just want some attention.

A couple of months ago, I travelled to Cherbourg and Murgon – two neighbouring towns in Queensland’s South Burnett region. Cherbourg is Queensland’s third largest Aboriginal community.

Although Cherbourg is only a 4-hour drive north-west from Brisbane, in some ways, it feels like a world away. It’s a little town, with minimal shops; lots of dust everywhere because of little rain; and there are no traffic lights. Definitely not like the ‘bubble’ of Brisbane I’m used to.

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For two Indigenous boys at Baralaba State School, life has taken a huge turn in the last 12 months thanks to the Limitless program for at-risk young people.

Limitless, rolled out for the first time in Central Queensland in Semester 2 of 2013, is an interactive, adventure-based, team-building program. It is suited for ‘at-risk’ students, those more suited to hands-on learning, and students aspiring to grow in leadership skills.

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Can you imagine going to school every day in the middle of a rainforest? What about in a small farming community? Or in the midst of an Indigenous community, or a remote little town on the coast?

David Kamholtz went to a school in every one of those places in the last week — and he’ll do it all again next week as well.

David is the school chaplain in four communities in the Cape — and although all are uniquely different, they are all bustling with energetic youth. (more…)

Across Queensland, school chaplains are working within Indigenous communities, encouraging children and youth to stay closely connected to their native culture.

Biloela chaplains Nigel Krueger and Lyn Webb place a high priority on working closely with local elders to ignite an excitement in young people to learn more about their heritage.

They are helping children like Brendan*, who lives with his uncle and aunty after both his parents died. “It’s a very messy situation for him at home, and you wonder how he’s been able to go through all that and come through the other end,” says Nigel, Biloela State High School’s chaplain.

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