Hoops 4 Health inspires job provider workers

BY VELMA GARA & CHRISTINE HOWES

Meriba Ged Ngalpun

Mab (MGNM) staff were “buzzing” after they undertook a Hoops 4 Health (H4H) resilience and empowerment workshop while the team was in town.

MGNM is a locally-owned job network provider which facilitates and delivers community development programs for the Torres Strait.

Executive Officer Marcella Ketchell said they had brought H4H to Warraber, Badhu and Waiben in an attempt to improve their engagement with young people, and they hoped to bring them back.

“There’s not a lot happening in the region for our young people and the majority of our job seekers on the caseload are in that younger age group,” she said.

“So [we were] wanting to be able to improve our engagement and connection with that group, understand how we can improve our service delivery to engage better with them, and to also find out what services or programs they want delivered through CDP – what activities they want formulated, projects, et cetera.

“And that leads to a community benefit.”

She said it was also important for communities to see their own people in leadership roles and delivering services to their own communities.

“They’re valuable because our people in community don’t usually get this type of program or training about resiliency, empowerment, the way that the brain works, how we make decisions, positive reinforcement or about positive decision making,” she said.

“It was also about understanding how our thinking is formulated.

“And it comes back to: ‘how we can help our people start to build some resiliency and confidence and feel empowered?’.

“We want them to engage with the projects and programs we’re going to roll out.”

She said she was confident the H4H training had not only had a positive impact on their engagement with community, but their own staff had benefitted.

“Our staff on TI did a session with the H4H team and they were just on another level after that training,” she said.

“They were just on a buzz, they really benefited from it and they’re already talking about when H4H come back, well, ‘we could do this, we could do that’.”

She said MGNM also hoped to support local H4H facilitators.

“We’d like to see one of our job seekers become a facilitator with them in the future as well,” she said.

Marcella said they were keen to have the H4H team, who included professional basketballers Nathan Jawai and former stars Deba George and Timmy Duggan, back.

“We’d love to bring them back,” Marcella said. “Obviously Deba and Nathan being Torres Strait Islander, their ability to engage and connect with people at grassroots level, is really important.”

She said they were a resounding success.

“To be able to be involved in a program that’s facilitated by people of that calibre in basketball is really good and special,” she said.

“It was a positive community program targeted at helping to build resiliency and empowerment.

“But it was also important as a First Nation’s program and organisation working with another First Nation’s organisation, so that our people can see and understand we can help each other build these skills and capabilities, and that our people can deliver.”

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