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Ganyu Newsletter Edition 45 February 2021

Our mission is to operate successful and responsible businesses emphasizing local employment, training, career pathways, customer service, and safety.

We strive to improve the health, quality of life, and economic development of our members, giving primacy to their cultural heritage, dignity, and desire for opportunity and equality with their fellow Australians.
 

We're back and ready for 2021 - Rev Dr. Djiniyini Gondarra

Welcome to the 2021 ALPA family, friends, and supporters.

I trust that you all had a happy, healthy, and safe festive season. It was wonderful to spend some quality time with family and friends back on Gailwin'ku and I hope you also did the same with your loved ones too.

As Chairman of ALPA, I was able to have conversations with many of our community members who expressed their excitement about our Corporation's plans to deliver a bigger and better retail range and also there's much anticipation about what's in store for our 2021 activities and program delivery?

Our Board of Directors is enthusiastic about executing phase 2 of our 2020/2021 Strategic plan and are confident we are tracking well. We are continually recognising and advocating the Yolngu desires to create equal opportunities for our communities.

ALPA is also anticipating news from the Northern Territory Government as to whether we will be awarded a major remote housing tender.

As one of our subsidiary businesses, Bukmak construction is in a unique position to heal wounds of welfare dependence, its Yolŋu workers are walking in the shoes of their parents and grandparents building bigger and better communities.

We are will continue to work with Government to achieve better outcomes for our people.

Nhäma Yalala  (see you later)

ALPA Chairman, Rev. Dr Djiniyini Gondarra
Bukmak Constructions Wants More Locally Built House Across Arnhem Land
Bukmak Constructions Chairman Micky Wunungmurra has recently called for the Northern Territory Government to commit to locally built houses across Arnhem Land. Watch this ABC TV report for more details.
Healthy Stores 2020: A successful health strategy
 

In October 2020, the findings of our Healthy Stores 2020 study were finally published in The Lancet Planetary Health Journal. We are proud to share these results with the world. Healthy Stores 2020 is the first study to show restricting the merchandising of unhealthy foods leads to a reduction in sugar consumption. This evidence can be used by policy offers and the food industry to improve population health.
The publication release received a lot of media attention and went viral on Twitter, exciting a number of public health advocates around the world:

Healthy Stores 2020, established by Monash University in partnership with The Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Corporation (ALPA), was implemented across 14 NT and six QLD remote community stores. The focus was on reducing the merchandising of unhealthy products, and specifically sugar, sugar-sweetened beverages, sweet biscuits, and confectionery while increasing the merchandising of healthier options.
The initiative resulted in a 6.8% reduction in free sugars purchased from sugar-sweetened beverages, a 7.5% reduction in free sugars purchased from confectionery, 10.1% increase in weight sold of healthier drinks, and a 21.5% reduction in free sugars from sugar-sweetened soft drinks in six stores where large unit soft drinks were removed from refrigeration. The 12-week trial resulted in the equivalent of 1.8 tonnes less of sugar sold from the 10 stores that received the strategy - equal to the weight of a large car.

The Healthy Stores 2020 strategies have since been incorporated into the ALPA Health and Nutrition Policy to ensure sustained impact across all ALPA stores. We encourage other stores to consider these strategies to support the health of their customers. We are happy to share our Healthy Stores 2020 journey with interested parties. For more information please contact our Health and Nutrition Manager, Khia De Silva nutrition@alpa.asn.au
Read the full paper in Lancet Planetary Health: Effect of restricted retail merchandising of discretionary food and beverages on population diet: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial.
 

HS2020 Twitter Thread Receives Positive Feedback



 
Bukmak Constructions Completes New Accommodation at Buthan

Bukmak Constructions recently completed the ALPA Accommodation at Buthan site on Galiwin'ku.
ALPA employees on Elcho Island are excited to move into their new accommodation while living on the Island.  
The new accommodation has provided an additional 5 self-contained units and 4 single rooms. The accommodation is located next to the newly built ALPA Training Hub, also completed by Bukmak Constructions.
Steve Roberts, General Manager of Enterprise and Economic Development says, “The Bukmak team are pleased to handover the completed project. This has allowed Bukmak to demonstrate a quality turnkey solution to all clients”.

Sargeant Tamara Whyte Making A Difference in Aurukun

Acting Sergeant Tamara White has been working in Aurukun since June 2020 on a 6-month rotation from Caboolture, QLD.

Tamara takes a people-minded approach with her work in the community. She volunteers as much as her busy work life can allow. You will often find her at the school, PCYC, the splash park or just walking around town mucking around with the kids. Sergeant White loves working with community and she aims to make a difference in children’s lives, no matter how big or small.

“To change one of their lives or just to make a difference to one of them is my aim. Even if I can help just one of the kids learn to read or get better English or even play sports. The kids have the biggest smiles and that reminds me of home. I love it”
 

ALPA Darwin Support Office Sees 3-New Managers
 
ALPA has a focus on growing its people! Recently ALPA has promoted three female staff to management positions within the company.

Tara Townsend (far-left) is a long-standing employee with ALPA, starting with us over7 years ago, and has recently been appointed Enterprise Finance Manager. Tara says “I feel the business values and mission align with me personally. I’m super passionate about education and empowerment, and love that I can use my technical skillset to make real on the ground difference for our community members.” Tara started out in ALPA in an entry-level role as a finance officer and has continued to grow from here. Tara was promoted to CDP Accountant after working with ALPA for a few years and this has seen her knowledge of the business and technical skills flourish.

Nicola Spalding (middle)  started with ALPA in 2018 as a payroll officer and has seen the tremendous growth of ALPA, and grew with the company – recently being promoted to a newly created role of payroll manager. Nicola is responsible for overseeing and leading the payroll team – from training and developing new and current employees, as well as ensuring all 45 payrolls are processed accurately and efficiently every fortnight so all of ALPAs 1200+ employees get paid on time, every time. Nicola describes ALPA as “ALPA is a great place to cultivate new skills and your improve work ethic.  It’s a great team to be a part of and has a culture of promoting from within.”

Donella Dabao (right) is another success story within ALPA. Donella moved to Darwin in February 2020 to begin her career at ALPA. Donella started out as an accountant within ALPA working predominately within the Enterprise division. Within three months, management could see the potential Donella had, and promoted her to Finance Manager of Consulting, more recently becoming the finance manager for ALPA. Donella was asked how she describes her role and what she is responsible for and her response was “I am currently the Finance Manager for ALPA and responsible for overseeing all the finance functions in ALPA retail, Island &Cape, and Community Services.

ALPA is committed to creating equal job opportunities and promoting a diverse and safe cultural work place.

Well done ladies!!
 
ALPA Nutrition Team and Uncle Jimmy Little Foundation create fun resources
 
ALPA is collaborating on a project with Outback Stores and Uncle Jimmy Thumbs Up! to bring some fresh education material into our stores across the Northern Territory and Queensland.  This project meets the objectives of all three organisations. ALPA’s nutrition strategy objectives include increasing awareness of good nutrition and healthy foods.  We have a need for updated health and nutrition messaging in stores, to support our customers to make healthy choices, alongside the healthy merchandising changes our stores have made already in Healthy Stores 2020. 

The educational material aims to increase fruit and vegetable consumption (fresh, tinned, and frozen), and decrease consumption of major sources of sugar in our customers’ diets, including table sugar, iced coffee, cordial, fruit drinks, and sugary snacks.  This project goes further than just targeting sugary soft drink consumption, which is a big contributor to sugar intake but is already being targeted (and successfully reduced) through numerous in-store strategies and campaigns.

In 2020, our project team worked with Monash University and ALPA’s Community Engagement team to test our design concepts with 58 participants (customers of remote stores across the Northern Territory – Tiwi Islands, East Arnhem Land, and Central Australia). Due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, we had to get creative withholding some of our focus groups based in Darwin with members of our remote communities, and we didn’t get across to Queensland due to border restrictions but the materials will be further tested there with the rollout of materials.
The testing showed our concepts and draft materials were accepted, and we gained some insight into community preference for messaging.  The first suite of designs has been finalized and piloted in two stores (Pirlangimpi and Minjilang) to evaluate the material’s viability and effectiveness. We are currently developing more material and working on a staged roll-out to all stores. 

Record-Breaking Sales for Island & Cape

The month of December saw some extremely strong sales results for the Island & Cape Stores. This was largely due to Queensland's Stolen Wages entitlement's that were distributed early in December.

The Queensland Government settled a long-running Stolen Wages case for $190 million in 2019. The findings meant that more than 10,800 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were to receive ‘stolen’ monies for wages earned between 1939 and 1972.

The distribution began in the first week of December 2020 and saw some sales records tumble across the Island & Cape stores. Of note were the best sales week ever achieved by Aurukun and Umagico Stores. On top of that, the Aurukun Store recorded 4 consecutive weeks of record sales.



As well as the Stolen Wages being paid, stores continue to see additional monies through ongoing COVID-19 stimulus payments.
Aurukun Store had increased store sales due to some community members receiving their annual WACCA (Western Cape Communities Trust) vouchers which are $500 in value and provided to approximately 250 residents of the community at Christmas time.

The store teams continue to ensure that service levels were of a high standard and stock was available throughout this period of elevated sales.

Well done to all.

Retail GM, Michael Dykes.
 
Rulku Lodge Starts a New Local Manager
 
Rulku Lodge has welcomed a new Guest Services Supervisor, Josephine Baker. Born in Milingimbi, Josephine is ready to increase local employment in the community.
Returning to Milingimbi from Darwin to be closer with family, Josephine wanted a full-time job that would allow her to gain new skills and take on challenges.
Josephine wants to be a good role model for the younger generation and make her fellow community members feel “like they can work if they put their mind to it”.
Someone Josephine looked up to as a child was Barbara McCarthy. She says, “I was fascinated that she looked like me and she was on TV”.
Thankful for the opportunity, Josephine is ready to represent Rulku Lodge but the people of Milingimbi as well. She looks forward to the future and seeing progress in the community.
Rulku Lodge is ready to welcome all new and regular guests in 2021.
 
NT Treaty Commissioner comes to Arnhem Land

In November, our Community Engagement team had the privilege of working with the NT Treaty Commissioner, Professor Mick Dodson, and his Treaty Commission team as they hosted public meetings in ALPA’s 4 Yolŋu member communities.
 
Professor Dodson provided valuable insight into how the NT Treaty process was set up and operates, how the treaty process has worked overseas to provide additional structures to promote self-determination and provided a platform for Yolngu leaders to discuss their aspirations for an NT Treaty.
 
Our Board Of Directors feel very strongly about the NT Treaty and asked the Community Engagement team to brief our members and allow them time to formulate their thoughts and questions regarding a Treaty in preparation for the meetings.
 
The feedback from the Commissioners team is that the strong attendance and meaningful level of engagement within the public meetings was beyond their expectations for the trip to East Arnhem Land.


 
Lyons Architects Help Bukmak Constructions Design Remote Housing Plans
 
ALPA and Bukmak Constructions recently collaborated with Lyons Architects in Melbourne to conduct a Yolngu public housing design project with our community advisory committees (‘CAC’) at our member communities.

In this project, Bukmak and ALPA’s community engagement team worked with Lyons Architects to conduct consultations (via video conference from Melbourne) with our Yolngu CAC members to develop housing designs with our community member to better meet the needs of Yolngu residents.
 
The intention is to provide these designs to the Government to lobby for their inclusion in future public housing projects.
 
A strong focus was made in the design was to incorporate cultural factors, robust design, and construction to ensure that the housing designs meet the needs of the household sizes and the natural environment of East Arnhemland. Other factors included having energy-efficiency in homes, to promote better living areas and airflow, and deliver positive public health outcomes.
 
The community engagement team has conducted 5 consultations with our CAC teams and 4 other consultations with senior Yolngu leaders. Bukmak and Lyons Architects are now tailoring the designs, scoping the construction costs, and collating the outcomes in a report to present to the Northern TerritoryGovernment.

 
ALPA and Bukmak extend our thanks to Lyons who have dedicated much time and their considerable expertise to work with Yolngu in a project we are hopeful will deliver culturally and environmentally informed designs to the government and to better achieve better houses for Yolngu in the future.  

Yolngu Leadership Push For Better Work Attendance

During 2020, our Leadership Team in Milingimbi wanted to share their story and drive a culture of regular team attendance and how to be proud of the stores that our teams are working in.

In late November, Area Manager Scot Cheesman arrived in Milingimbi to an eager Leadership Team, dressed to impress in the full ALPA Uniform attire with their mentor and coach – Mel Mason.
The team traveled across to Galiwinku, where they were engaged with the following activities
 
  • Assisting Buthan with a full stock take count
  • Date Coding
  • Store best standards
  • Nutritional checks and compliance
  • Competition checks with our competitors in the community
They also had a great meeting with the new and up and coming Leadership Team of Galiwinku. There was some great dialogue, plenty of ideas, and storytelling on how our Yolngu Leadership is strong and how it becomes even stronger through unity.
It was also important to enjoy some time outdoors, where both teams got together and enjoyed some fishing as a collective group.

The ‘Mighty’ Milingimbi Leadership Team leading from the front!

Scott says he is looking forward to more of these activities in 2021 as we continue to share our story and journey of strong and unified Yolngu Leadership throughout our region!

Training Builds Confidence for Adrian Garawirrtja

Written by Adrian Garawirrtja:

I started working at the Galiwinku Store in 2016. I love my job because it's physical work and I am always learning new skills each day. We used to have an old crew at the store (who have moved away) and we worked really well together, got to have some laughs whilst we worked hard, and we were all proud.
I have previously assisted with the Retail Leadership Team and we were so proud to be left in charge of running the store during some nighttime shifts.
In the future, I want to do more training so I can train our new team and have confidence in my job. The training gave me the start to my confidence and I want it to grow more. It has helped me to be a senior team member and to help others be proud of their store and the work they do. In the future, I want to get my forklift license so I can help my boss more on barge days.
Meet Renata Collins from Robinson River
 
Renata Collins has been working at the Robinson River store for 4 years and supervises the takeaway.  She loves to cook as she does it every day at home.
Working at the store has helped her develop her cooking skills, teaching her different styles of cooking and presenting food.
Renata is working her way through Certificate II in Retail Services and some of her future goals are to get more experience at organising and preparing food.  Some of the highlights of completing her training so far has been learning about food safety and different ways of cooking.
 
Congratulations Levi Taylor from Dinybulu Workshop

Before the end of 2020, the Dinybulu Workshop apprentice mechanic Levi Taylor completed his Certificate III in Light Vehicle Mechanical Technology.
Levi started his studies through Charles Darwin University (CDU) in 2018 and would fly into Darwin to attend study blocks. Due to the remoteness of Levi’s location, he would sometimes have to attend classes in Ramingining via video link.
Levi says he chose this course because he “likes cars and wanted to learn more about them”
Levi was presented his certificate at the Dinybulu Board Meeting in December.
The Dinybulu Workshop has had a busy start to 2021 and looks forward to working with new and existing clients.
 
Committed To Our Communities Over Christmas

The roads that we use to transport essential food items from the barge location to stores are vital throughout the year. This wet season was predicted to be a particularly wet one so community roads are put under significant pressure with rain and heavy vehicles. Our Retail GM, Michael Dykes, travelled each of the road routes to all of the ALPA Member store's barge landings.

"I was generally pleased that the roads were in a good condition and that food security would not be impacted. To support our remote drivers, we have also invested in extra wet road training. This involves 1:1 training to ensure that our team and the vehicles are ready for the challenging conditions." 

" It was a wonderful trip where I also got the opportunity to thank our teams personally for their commitment over the past, very challenging, year and wish them all the best for the year ahead."

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ALPA (The Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Corporation) · GPO Box 3825 · Darwin, NT 0801 · Australia

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