INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT: Dream Academy 2026 lights up Macleay Valley for young people’s futures

26 August 2026. Jo Kelly, Executive Director of Learning the Macleay speaking with Fiona Poole, Breakfast Presenter of ABC Coffs and Mid North Coast.

Yuwa Nyinda in Dunghutti language means ‘Yes You’ and yesterday and today Kempsey kids are being spoken to directly and the message from Yuwa Nyinda Dream Academy is ‘Hey you – you belong here, you matter and you can’. Jo Kelly from Learning the Macleay joins us. G’day Jo.

G’day how you going?

I hear it’s just a cracking couple of days there, set the scene for us, what have you got happening?

 So, we’ve got a majority of schools across the Macleay Valley coming across into the racecourse yesterday and today, about 1300 school students who are coming to learn a little bit more about culture, and particularly Dunghutti culture – and look at some careers opportunities that are aspirational so they can dream towards where they want to land when they finish schooling, so then have the ability to dream again.

And we’ve got some wellbeing space – so when we spent time with young people last year, they said that one of the issues was around mental health and wellbeing, so we’ve been able to bring some people along to help guide their resilience building so that they have more tools in their kit for when they need it.

Oh I love that, so what are the tools you’re giving them there?

So, we’ve been able to engage the Goanna Academy – Greg Inglis has been here with his team and they’ve been sitting down and working with the groups of students that went through yesterday around some of their aspirations – when they’re feeling sad, what do they do when they need support, who do they turn to? So then the engagement that we have them now, is that we will continue to work with the Goanna Academy from now until the end of the year to continue the work that they’ve started.

Greg Inglis would have brought a vibe wouldn’t he? Do all the kids just to flock to him?

The kids and some of the stallholders have gone crazy knowing that Greg is in town so he’s had a lot of fanning going on you know, he’s loving it, he’s loving being back on country – he’s loving working with our kids. He said this is an opportunity for him to bring his skills and his team into our community so that we can grow their resilience.

We know that youth crime has been in the spotlight for the last couple of years hasn’t it Jo, and there’s been rallies, and we’ve seen The Nationals Party really advocating for tougher bail reform laws for kids that are incarcerated and reoffending, on break and enters and car theft, I mean is this event about tackling that issue, this sort of issue, youth crime, or is it much bigger than that?

This is much bigger than that, the reality is, is that we focus much more on the negative and we don’t push out the positives as much as we should, so events like this is, how do we flip that narrative? So that we’re seeing the good things that are happening in our community; the good things that young people are working on and are doing rather than just the negative. And yes crime has been an issue but it’s not the only issue that we face in the Macleay Valley and unfortunately that gets the spotlight rather than all the good work that we do.

Can you tell me a good news story? Would you tell me about a young person that is just like feeling inspired and on track to do something with their life that they’ve dreamt up for themselves?

So, what we’ve been able to do leading up to this one we’ve engaged with young people, we have what we call our Youth Engagement Team; so, they’ve been coming and working with us for about 8 weeks to co-design how we deliver the Dream Academy.

There’s about 10 that we have onsite, they help bump-in for the Dream Academy, they were there yesterday, they’re going to be there today. They’re doing the MCing, their doing the interviews that we have for “Yuwa Nyinda Yarn Ups”. So, their presence is amazing as part of the work we are doing onsite for the Dream Academy. This has allowed them to do the things they want to do and aspire to – it’s about their leadership, it’s about growing their voice and we’ve been able to do that. And this stuff has all come from the youth engagement work that we’ve been able to do all last year.

As I said like, you know mental health and wellbeing was an issue so that’s why we’ve got the wellbeing section as part of the Dream Academy; growing a youth voice – that’s why we’ve got the youth engagement team – so, we’re listening, we’re hearing and we’re doing what they want us to do, so it’s allowed us to step back and they’ve taken a leadership role.

That brings me back to that line again that’s going around all that time, ‘If it’s about us then not without us’.

Exactly.

If you’re going to put an event on for young people in the Macleay you have to do it with them step-by-step – I love it.

Totally.

Jo, fabulous OK so where to next? Is this, will this be an annual event or does this youth engagement team have another plan for something else soon?

Yeah, so we’re going to be launching the Youth Action Plan in October and that’s been intentional because October is Mental Health Month picking up on the discussions we had around mental health and wellbeing. So, young people will co-design all of that stuff and they will lead the launch of the action plan that came directly from them, so we’ve been able to facilitate, advocate and support but they’re going to lead the way in terms of how we do business for us at Learning the Macleay, Dhina Dhurritti and Butatarang Connected Beginnings, it’s about them leading us now into the future.

You can listen to the original interview at 1:05:45 on the recording here https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/midnorthcoast-breakfast/breakfast/107069482