Co Design in Action

Thebarton Senior College is no ordinary school. Located four kilometres from the Adelaide CBD, it is South Australia's only United Nations Global Peace School, actively embedding peace-building into its curriculum. Its students come from some of the most diverse backgrounds in the country, many of them having arrived in Australia in recent years and restarted their education from scratch.

When this group attended an external leadership conference a few years ago, the experience wasn't what it should have been. They weren't made to feel welcome. Rather than walk away from leadership development altogether, their teacher and community made a different decision: they would build something of their own, for their own community.

That decision led them to YLAA.

The group first attended the YLAA National Tour in 2023 with a small cohort. Then they came back. And again. Each year the group grew. Students left each event energised and ready to act, and that energy compounded. The community fundraised $22,000 to bring their full group to the National Leadership Forum, an experience students described as life-changing. They then came back and volunteered at YLAA in 2026.

But the original idea never went away. What if we built something for our own community?

In 2026, they did exactly that. Working alongside YLAA, Thebarton's students designed and facilitated a full-day leadership summit for 80 young people from 5 schools across South Australia. YLAA supported the planning process and provided the facilitation framework, but the students led the day themselves.

Sessions covered:

• Values and emotions

• Introvert and extrovert styles

• Personality types

• Networking

• Creative thinking

• Decision making

• Public speaking

• Leadership timeline: the moments that shaped you

• Student project idea sharing

The result was a room full of young people who felt seen, challenged and ready to lead, facilitated by peers who had lived similar experiences.

This is what YLAA is built for. Not just a one-day conference, but a spark that young people carry back into their communities and turn into something real.