The National Centre of Indigenous Excellence has launched the Online Community of Excellence - a new social media website to support young Indigenous Australians.
(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
The site allows young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians who participate in the Centre's programs to connect online and receive support from role models, mentors and each other.
Since opening in 2010, the Centre has had more than 15,000 young Indigenous Australians participate in its pathway programs, including in arts, health, and sport.
CEO of the National Centre for Indigenous Excellence, Jason Glanville, says online engagement with Indigenous youth is crucial to cultivating talent, creating opportunities, and inspiring excellence.
"The young people who have designed it for us, and the young people who have been testing it for us, are calling it the 'Black Fella Facebook'. It's quite different to Facebook in a range of ways but really we had to make sure it looked and felt like a lot of social media tools that young people are already using. But we've taken away a lot of the stuff that really distracts people and detracts from their experience of social medias."
Mr Glanville compares the Black Fella Facebook to other social media websites.
"It's built so that young people build an aspirations profile, so rather than as with things like Facebook and others where people will do status updates around what they ate for lunch or what they are doing in the afternoon, the updates are around individual aspirations, so whether it's about completing particular projects at school or particular health and well-being outcomes, or career aspirations - whatever they might be."
National Centre for Indigenous Excellence ambassador, and Indigenous Australian author, Anita Heiss, has already posted four goals on her own "Black Fella Facebook" profile page, which range from doing home improvements to reading 52 books in 52 weeks for the National Year of Reading.
"I post updates regularly. I was just out at Cowra last week, so I'll let people know that I'm working with young kids on a literacy program out there or I'll post events if there's writing events around because I'm an author by trade, so I like to let people know when there's indigenous literary events on."
Ms Heiss says one of her favourite features of the website is the "respect" function.
Rather than users clicking a "like" button in response to a status update, they hit the "respect" icon, which is a symbol of a closed fist.
"Respect is so much better than Facebook's 'like', and it's actually a powerful affirmation that somebody acknowledges what you've said or whatever goal you've set. That's what I like about this particular online community. It's a very positive, affirming space where we're not reading about running family members down or hangovers or any other negative thing that often weighs us down emotionally and psychologically."
The National Centre of Indigenous Excellence says the new website would not have been made possible without the Telstra Foundation, which donated 400-thousand-dollars over three years, to the project.
The Chief Sustainability Officer of Telstra, Tim O'Leary, says the website is the foundation's most significant Indigenous investment - in an online sense - and he believes it will have a positive long term impact for young Indigenous people.
"This is certainly the first online community of Excellence that we have ever done for Indigenous Australia. To be able to ensure that the thousands of young Indigenous people who pass through this centre of Excellence can remain connected but not only remain connected but can talk to each other, can look at job opportunities, look at learning opportunities, to share their goals and experience."
The National Centre of Indigenous Excellence consulted more than 70 young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians during the design and development process to ensure young people's perspectives and ideas were a central focus.
