The LGBTQIA+ activist made waves while at school, paving the way for diversity and inclusion in a small town often passed off as unchangeable.

He set up Katherine's first pride festival to break down barriers and designed a program called the Connectedness Workshop Collection to combat stereotypes and build a positive culture around LGBTQIA+ language.

The NT Government has shown an interest in adding the workshops into the rural education system.

Run over two weeks in July last year, the pride festival coated Katherine in colour, screened Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and had everyone dressing up for a rainbow masquerade ball.

As for the workshops, in Katherine they proved to be a success.

"A teacher emailed me after and said her grade eight class didn't usually talk to each other at all but after we ran the workshop the students started to communicate because they realised they had things in common," Mr Hooper told the Katherine Times last year.

He won the Somerville Community Service Award in the 2018 Northern Territory Young Achiever Awards, was Katherine's Young Citizen of the Year and sat on the Northern Territory's Youth Round Table.

His advocacy in Katherine was about showing people how to be a better ally, "how to publicly support someone without making it about you", he said last year.

"It was a pretty negative environment before."

"Rural Pride is not just about making the LGBTQIA+ community feel welcome, but about making everyone feel welcome," Mr Hooper said.

Known to be the pinnacle of human rights recognition in Australia, the Human Rights Award shines a light on those promoting and protecting rights and freedoms.

A finalist for the Young People's Human Rights Medal, Mr Hooper stands strong in a group of five.

He is up against Madison Birtchnell, a champion for gender equality and the health and wellbeing of women, Indigenous sister duo, Marlee and Keely Silva, who co-founded Tiddas 4 Tiddas, a social media platform dedicated to sharing the stories of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander women, and Keeley Johnson, a young girl with an intellectual disability and autism, who founded the not-for-profit organisation, Keeley's Cause.

Also a finalist is Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts, a Bundjalung woman, writer and youth leader who has dedicated her time to fighting injustices that disproportionately affect her community.

The Human Rights Award winners will be announced on Friday December 13, in Sydney.

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