Empower
Since 1957, the Tranby team has lived and learned empowerment as a collective process. Our methods have evolved over time, through a collaborative journey of trust and understanding, and by providing cultural strength alongside our students, Elders, and Community.
For us, empowerment means honoring our commitment to Community; listening to, and being guided by needs, aspirations, and methods of change.
Aboriginal Controlled Education
Advocacy
A Strength-Based Approach
At Tranby, we focus on the collective solutions rather than the insurmountable problems.
Providing our students, staff, and community with a culturally safe and supportive space to yarn about these challenges – sharing their stories, knowledge, and experiences, and acknowledging our shared history – enables community-led change to occur.
We know that members of our community have the appropriate solutions – placed-based, relevant and meaningful to the Indigenous communities where they live, work, and learn. We empower our students through culturally focused learning that engages and inspires them to take positive impacts back to their communities.
Leadership
For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults, leadership can be a daunting word, but it is a responsibility many already perform in their daily lives.
When students come to Tranby, our purpose is to share skills, knowledge, and culture. We support them in creating and owning their personal leadership journey, increasing their confidence, and inspiring them to participate and lead change for our communities.
Empowerment is an attitude and strength that is cultivated by nurturing and growing students’ skills, knowledge and self-confidence.
Lifelong Learning
Students who choose to study at Tranby are provided with the tools to turn learning challenges into practical actions. Tranby cultivates an environment of trust, healing, and support that ensures every student can define and walk their own path of success.
Tranby often welcomes students who consider that gaining a qualification is out of their reach, but our lifelong learning ethos instills new confidence in them, allowing them to graduate feeling that they have achieved ‘the impossible’.
Both on campus and online, Tranby provides a judgement-free atmosphere and a learning environment that is culturally responsive.
At Tranby, we welcome adult learners, no matter what your age. What matters most is your willingness to keep growing and learning more about yourself, your culture, and your community.
Ripples of Change
The knowledge instilled at Tranby radiates like water ripples – our students being at the centre of everything we do. We connect them through culture, weave them together, and heal by sharing truths and reclaiming voices.
Along their educational journeys, students find new knowledge, friendships, skills, and confidence. Knowledge and truth breed resilience and from them community leaders grow. The ripple effect from Tranby’s student community demonstrates our reciprocal learning approach. Tranby graduates leave with new ways of thinking and share their new knowledge with their families and communities.
The Learning Journey
Our students come from communities around Australia, bringing different levels of cultural knowledge, community experience, and interests.
Our yarning circle education format, ensures that our trainers engage students differently. We create supportive learning environments where every participant has something to learn and share. In turn, this builds our students’ self-confidence, making them comfortable to ask questions, share knowledge, and learn from one another, while also grounding them in culture.
A supportive learning environment is essential to promoting meaningful student achievement. We connect and empower our students through cultural engagement, to enhance peer-to-peer relationships. When students feel supported by their peers, they achieve better results. This is because supportive learning communities enable students to see new perspectives, face tough topics, and have challenging conversations, inspiring them both individually and collectively.
Individual Support
Studying as an adult can present many challenges. For our Mob, these are amplified by systemic barriers and racism commonly experienced in western education systems. Combined with their study load, adult learners also face the added pressures of juggling work, family, and community commitments.
The Tranby team recognises these challenges and understands that each student faces a different set of obstacles. To alleviate stress and build student confidence, we provide holistic support to ensure they can continue their studies and succeed. Our support is led by culture and includes encouragement by Elders, academic, trainer and IT support, and career pathway mapping through our Burawa program.
We strive to meet our student’s individual needs by providing the appropriate tools, connections and supports to empower them for their learning journey.
Student Success
We know that success looks different to everyone. Tranby’s individual-focused support system ensures that everyone is given the tools to succeed, from their own perspective. Education, after all, is about the journey not just the qualification or piece of paper.
Community Focus
As Australia’s oldest Independent Indigenous Registered Training Organisation, Tranby is dedicated to community empowerment. By designing our courses to be responsive to Community needs, we invest in creating community leaders, who then have the capacity to build stronger communities all around Australia.
The experiences, histories, and hopes of our Mob are at the core of Tranby. Our learning environments provide students with the opportunity to learn about, from and with other Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples and organisations. This enhances students’ critical thinking abilities and transforms their classroom discussions into applied understanding and practice of Community issues.
