Selina Bowen joined the Program as a Skilling Leader in 2014. She has now graduated from this phase and recently took some time to reflect on why she joined the Program, how she benefitted from it and her future plans.
“My boss recommended for me to do this Program… and they also explained to me that there was others from Hope Vale that were Excelling Leaders and they just explained to me how it would benefit me in my home life, in the workplace and the community…”
Selina works as a Parenting Consultant in the Hope Vale O-Hub and has been with the team since 2014. Through her role, she supports members of her own community to ensure Hope Vale children grow up in happy, healthy households.
She found the Leaders Program challenging, but rewarding.
“And… which parts have been challenging, I think all the modules that we covered in the Skilling Leaders Program… being a natural leader and self- and family-leadership, the work course and community leadership.”
“I think in a way it has helped me with my work in delivering Triple P to people back home and—Triple P is the Positive Parenting Program—trying to explain to them that even though that’s not part of our culture, that there’s lots of suggestions, strategies and skills in that Program that parents can use to make… when raising a child is frustrating and challenging, there are skills they can use to make it easier for them.”
“Also the skills of developing their children… to help them transform from community life into the bigger world, bigger society.”
While on the Leaders Program, Selina was invited to be part of a panel with the Family Responsibilities Commission, to talk to community members who were having trouble sending their kids to school, or who’d come into contact with Child Safety authorities.
“…that gave me the strength and the confidence and the courage, actually,… to be there as the voice of the children in a way… being there to direct other adults in our community to do the right thing.
“…doing this Program has helped me in my position… And I think my future goal is to now do the next bit, the Excelling Leadership…”
Selina is proud to be helping her community, and “…even prouder to be a Bama that comes here to be the link, the bridge for our young children to meet the outside world and to live in the wider society. And to embrace change together…”