For many students, the dream of attending university and getting a degree can feel completely out of reach, even if it’s all they’ve ever wanted to do. Positive role models can play a critical role, showing students that despite their own doubts about the possibility of ever attending university, that they can.  

Creating a space where high school students can be inspired by positive role models to believe in their own abilities and see a brighter future themselves is what it’s all about for Jacob Wehr-Murphy.  

Jacob is a proud Arrente Luritja man and a part of the team from the Kulbardi Aboriginal Centre at Murdoch University. His role focuses on helping students to understand their strengths and enable them to pursue the career of their choice, which is run through the ‘Deadly Dreaming’ program.  

The program comprises of three workshops, the first of which involves breaking down stereotypes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people, showing student that they are not as society portrays them in the media, and rather, that they have the ability to be so much more than these preconceived ideas.  

The second workshop is a historical reflection on the past Indigenous figures who have achieve success despite the inherit adversity they face during their lives. It plays a key role in providing students with positive and endearing role models for students, again reminding them that they aren’t defined by the societal portrayals.  

The third workshop involves students developing a life plan that honours their past successes, whilst also planning for the future with the learnings from the previous workshops.  

Jacob says that the most rewarding part of what he does is seeing students realise that they can achieve everything they wish to pursue in their life. 

Jacob’s vision of a brighter future is a world where students can be given the opportunities to grow and achieve their dreams and ambitions, no matter what they are. 

“I believe that the longer this program continues and the more we can build relationships with these schools and their students, the more we can build beliefs in creating their own brighter futures. I believe that it is the duty of what myself and my team do at Kulbardi, to inspire these students to dare more and dream bigger.”     

Jacob is just one of the many faces of a brighter future, working in their own unique ways to make a brighter future a reality.