YEAR Six student Ezekial Simmonds has put in the hard yards to get an Aboriginal flag installed at Vienna Woods State School in the hopes that it will make his Indigenous peers feel more included.
Ezekial, who is 11 years old, spoke to the school P&C, local councillors, state and federal MPS and contractors to organise the process from beginning to end and have the flag installed by Anzac Day.
"I wanted to encourage Aboriginal students to come to our school and I felt flying the Indigenous flag would make them feel welcome," he said.
He was assisted by Cr Murray Elliott, who provided a grant for the flag, as well as Bowman MP Andrew Laming and Capalaba MP Don Brown.
With the help of mother Katherine Simmonds, Ezekial also looked at quotes from different companies to figure out the best deal.
"I brought it to the P&C at a meeting in February and they said yes, and then we started looking at ll the different companies that did the flagpoles," he said.
Ezekial said it was important that the flag had been installed before the school's Anzac Day ceremony on Wednesday.
"If there (were) any Aboriginal soldiers that were there, we would have been able to also represent them by having the Aboriginal flag," he said.
At the ceremony, Ezekial was a proud flag bearer, in charge of raising and lowering the flag.
Along with the rest of the Year 6 cohort, he also wore a badge commemorating a deceased member of the armed forces.
Ezekial remembered Herbert Eric Walter, who was killed in action in Papua New Guinea in 1942 at the age of 22.
Ms Simmonds said she was impressed by her son's initiative and generous spirit.
"His father and I are both very proud of him and really happy that he's wanting to make everyone else feel welcome and included and thinking of others and not just himself," she said.