Jacinta Bailey

Jacinta is driven to decolonize education and development frameworks to inspire more sustainable and equitable leadership in Australia and beyond. After completing a Double Bachelor in Social and Political Science and International Relations at The University of Technology Sydney, she pursued an Honours Research Degree to investigate how Family Violence responses could be enhanced through Indigenous women’s ways of knowing, doing, being and healing. This research inspired her determination for Indigenous-led development as a vehicle for enhancing holistic solutions, women’s leadership and community wellbeing.

Jacinta’s passion for Indigenous-led education and development is grounded in her experience working with Achuar Communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon Jungle and her work for the past 7 years at Tranby Aboriginal Co-Operative, Australia’s first and longest running Indigenous-led education Not-for-Profit. As a non-Indigenous ally, Jacinta firmly believes education is a critical tool for advancing community equity, improving decision making and instilling values of reciprocity and humility in our next generation of leaders.

In Australia, Jacinta actively works to inspire young leaders through meaningful community-led education opportunities. Her work as a Board Member for Voices of Influence, a youth-led human rights organisation, demonstrates her passion for igniting Youth leadership as a tool of policy influence and reform. Jacinta’s engagement with Giving Education Meaning, a youth focused social enterprise supporting young people’s emotional education through art and community learning, highlights her belief in holistic education frameworks as a tool to alleviate growing mental health issues, especially amongst young people.

Through her Rotary Fellowship, Jacinta is eager to advance her critical understanding of Peacebuilding through Community education, women’s empowerment and Indigenous-led development. In doing so, she aspires to fill the lacuna between policy development and grassroots leadership, to strengthen sustainable development practices, Indigenous self-determination frameworks and lifelong learning education models.