Last week our IYMP Rockhampton staff and participants met with an ABSTUDY Travel Multi-Disciplinary Research Team and Services Australia member at the Brown St training room.

IYMP participants Blaine Saltner, Elizabeth Thaiday and Stacey Sailor shared their travel experiences with the ABSTUDY Travel Multi-Disciplinary Research team. The IYMP participants shared their experiences travelling from their remote communities and islands on ABSTUDY’s travel itineraries, the difficulties with connecting travel, as well as the many other struggles they endured in their secondary and tertiary education away from their home and family support.

The scope and objectives of the conversation were to:

• Understand if the administration of ABSTUDY travel policy is supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to take full advantage of educational opportunities available.
• Identify barriers that hinder or prevent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students accessing, attending or achieving their educational and cultural outcomes.
• Identify opportunities to improve travel experience for students and their families.
• Gather compelling stories of current travel experiences from customers, staff, third party organisations and other stakeholders to build evidence on reasons for change.
• Measure customer and stakeholder sentiment changes against research conducted in 2019 to understand impact of implemented changes on travel experience.

On behalf of IYMP we would like to thank our deadly team and participants at IYMP Rockhampton for taking the time to share your stories and your experiences. We would also like to thank the ABSTUDY Travel Multi-Disciplinary Research team for supporting young Indigenous Australians in their educational journeys.