Endeavour Group and Larrakia Nation partner to deliver Bagot youth centre

Two major organisations have partnered to deliver multiple ‘harm minimisation’ initiatives including a youth centre for Bagot Community.

A partnership between a leading hospitality business and a peak body for cultural protocol has culminated in four initiatives to tackle the issues near and dear to the Darwin community.

Endeavour Group – who owns BWS – formally announced its collaboration with Larrakia Nation on Wednesday.

Endeavour Group chief executive Steve Donohue said the company set up its community advisory committee about 18 months ago as an “exercise in trying to be connected to community”.

He said the partnership with Larrakia Nation was one of the committee’s four key recommendations.

It comes almost five months after BWS began supplying customers with Larrakia Nation’s cultural protocol guides.

Endeavour Group chief executive Steve Donohue announced a formal partnership between the company and Larrakia Nation. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

Alongside the renewed partnership, the committee suggested the company invest in a Bagot Community youth centre.

“If you take the community centre at Bagot for example, what we’ve committed to is a feasibility study to really deeply understand from the community what they’re looking for,” Mr Donohue said.

“People want a safe place to spend time together, the community is telling us that it’s important that young boys and young girls have got separate facilities and they’ve also got connected facilities and places where they can learn, they can be educated, they can take some time to chill out and have fun together.”

He said other recommended initiatives such as a yarning circle at Sanderson Middle School were more straightforward.

“The school needed something like that, we thought it was a great initiative, so we’re really pleased to jump in and help with that,” Mr Donohue said.

Larrakia Nation chairman Jerome Cubillo said it was time for the NT community to listen to its young people. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

Larrakia Nation chairman Jerome Cubillo said the committee had a particular focus on “harm minimisation”.

As chairman of the committee as well, Mr Cubillo said the group wanted to understand what different community members needed most.

The latest Productivity Commission data shows that 96 per cent of Territory kids in detention are Indigenous, with First Nations children locked up at a rate 33 times higher than non-Indigenous children.

“We need to listen to young people and hear their ideas and solutions,” he said.