Maningrida's young leaders recognised

Three outstanding members of the Maningrida community are semi finalists in the 2017 Northern Territory Young Achiever Awards.
Young Codie Gibson, Philamena and Noeletta McKenzie, all of who are part of Maningrida’s GREATS Youth Service (GYS), have all been announced as semi finalists of the awards which aim in encourage, reward and most importantly promote the positive achievements of young Territorians.
Junior Youth Worker Codie, who was nominated for the Genesee & Wyoming Australia Indigenous Achievement Award, is a young strong leader who will speak up for what he believes in and is always showing leadership skills to the youth in the community.
Since joining GYS Codie has overcome many challenges and succeeded in anything that he does.
The youth which attend GYS adore Codie as he shows them that he is a very gentle caring youth worker.
Codie is not afraid to ‘give it a go’ and it seeps down to the youth. He recently starred in the IHHP film clip ‘My Heart Keeps Beating’ - a song that tells a strong story about RHD in communities. This song received National Coverage on the NITV story on RHD.
Codie also recently attended the Youth Leadership Summit at CDU and was a very strong participant.
Youth worker Philamena has also been named a semi finalist in both the Minister for Territory Families Excellence in Youth Leadership Award and the Glencore McArthur River Mining Regional and Rural Initiative Award.
Philamena is certainly an inspiring role model who’s goals are to create strong young leaders with respect and culture, and to give the youth a voice to speak up for what they need and to be heard; to speak out loud and make a change.
Passionate about supporting the youth in her community, Philamena has worked alongside other staff at GYS to deliver programs to support the health, education, wellbeing, and emerging leadership skills and potential of young remote Indigenous youth.
Not only has her work benefited the youth locally, but through her leadership and coordination, she has facilitated a range of opportunities for these youth to connect with other youth nationally, which has brought wide reaching benefits for all participants as well as the NT broadly through awareness raising and advocacy work.
On top of her roles and responsibilities with GYS, Philamena took on the Co-Director role at the recent L’urra Festival.
GYS Manager Noeletta is also a semi finalist in the Minister for Territory Families Excellence in Youth Leadership Award.
Noeletta is a strong leader of GYS which is a huge contributor to Maningrida and the wider community by offering programs which engage youth and keep them off the streets.
GYS is overseen by the Youth Leadership Committee, and this committee is made up of 15 strong young leaders from Maningrida who give local youth direction in regards to programming and youth affairs.
GYS has curbed youth violence and gang acts in the community and ensures the youth have a safe place to go to.
The youth have eight local fully-trained youth workers who they trust and reach out to if they are not in a good space and are voluntarily on-call 24 hours a day.
GYS is producing strong young leaders and sees approximately 75 youth at the nightly programs.
Noeletta was also awarded Person of the Year 2015 during the Top End NAIDOC Week.
Judging for the NT Young Achiever Awards will take place on Thursday, February 16 and finalists will be presented and winners announced at an Awards Gala Presentation Dinner in Darwin on Saturday, April 1.