Building skills with Mawarnkarra

On April 14, I visited the Wickam Community in WA’s Pilbara region to deliver training with the teams from Mawarnkarra, Wirraka Maya Health Service Aboriginal Corporation and Puntukurnu Aboriginal Medical Service - Pilbara TIS.

The day was filled with shared ideas, advice and meaningful discussions about strengthening the impact of Tackling Indigenous Smoking (TIS) across the Pilbara region. Throughout the conversations, it was strongly emphasised that meeting the needs of community remains central to the work we do, and that building a strong consortium will create greater influence and positive change for the communities we service.

Many Aboriginal communities across the Pilbara are regional, remote and very remote. Coming together regularly, developing new resources and fostering culturally grounded ways of working, continues to be an important strategy for delivering the program effectively. We also discussed ways to improve and elevate the visibility and impact of TIS throughout the Pilbara region.

During the session, I shared the latest insights and updates from NBPU TIS, including new resources and tobacco control activities being delivered by the TIS workforce across the country. Together, we worked through developing effective calls to action, very brief advice methods, and explored how we can collaborate as a consortium to plan future activities.

After lunch, we concluded the day with a case study exercise that demonstrated how monitoring and evaluation (M&E) works and why it is such an important part of TIS program implementation.

There are many exciting things ahead for the Pilbara TIS consortium; watch this space!

Oniké Williams
NBPU TIS Program Officer WA

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