Bamaga local becomes first BEL scholarship winner to graduate

Rising community leader has become Bamaga Enterprises Ltd’s scholarship programmes’ recipient to graduate

Bamaga Enterprises Limited (BEL) is proud to announce rising community leader Yanetta Nadredre will be the first scholarship recipient to graduate from university in May. 

BEL provided a university scholarship of $5,000 per year to Ms Nadredre to study a Bachelor of Business Administration at the University of Technology in Sydney from 2019 to 2021. 

Communications challenges for Indigenous people 

Working in the mines as an Indigenous support worker and community liaison exposed her to the challenges Indigenous people faced while at work, Ms Nadrede says. 

“There is essentially a communications breakdown. I found that when delivering training, the language barrier was huge and that training programs weren’t tailored to our people. For many people, English is their second or third language. 

“It really dawned on me that this language barrier was stopping experienced people to get into leadership positions. 

“I started to mentor young people and women in my community to prepare them to get jobs. And that sparked my interest into further training myself and going for the Bachelor of Business Administration.” 

According to Ms Nadrede, going to university helped her realise what a lot of the youth back in Bamaga were facing. 

“Going down to Sydney for university, I experienced the same exact thing. So I would speak my lingo to the lectures to inform them that this is what they would sound like to me. The lectures felt they were speaking a foreign language. But going there as an older, mature student I had the confidence – which sometimes youth lack – to communicate if I didn’t understand something.”

She says speaking up helped her lecturers understand the communication barriers still in place, which was something they had never been aware of. 

“The lecturers were just blown away by it because they didn’t want people walking out of their training not learning anything.” 

Personal learnings  

Ms Nadrede says her degree taught her a lot about herself, too. 

“The biggest thing for me was discipline. There is no fairy that’s going to come and do the job for you. At the end of the day, you’ve got to bite the bullet and make those sacrifices for your future. 

“Even when it got tough juggling family and studies, I kept communicating with my lecturers and letting them know I’m not a quitter. And they were really supportive throughout. 

“But I couldn’t have done it without the support from BEL.” 

A bright future for all 

Next on the cards for Ms Nadrede is starting her coaching and mentoring business, Strait Success to continue to be an inspiration to many in her local community in Bamaga.  

She has mentored over 100 women and children in small, Aboriginal communities who have faced great challenges, and wishes to continue her work of empowering Indigenous people. 

Ms Nadrede says she wants to be a role model to her five children like her mother was to her. 

BEL’s Socio Support Policy has re-invested more than $3 million of its profits in sponsorships, donations and community infrastructure since its establishment in 2002.  As part of this, educational funding opportunities include scholarships for university course fees up to $5,000 per annum; and significant TAFE Diploma course fees up to $1,000 per year.