Gawler and District College students Jasmine Keily, Jake Niutta, Seth Phillips and Sam Sparrow will be able to take part in a range of new school holiday workshops, to be introduced in the region later this year. PHOTO: Ellouise Crawford
A SERIES of workshops and activities, targeted at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people, is currently being planned for the Christmas school holiday break.
Sonder Care, covering the Gawler, Tanunda, Kapunda and Nuriootpa region, has been given a State Government grant to deliver a school holiday program, as part of the SA Healthy Towns Challenge.
The Healthy Towns Challenge encourages regional towns to develop and implement creative and innovative preventive health projects within their local community.
Sonder Care’s Healthy Eating, Activity and Lifestyle (HEAL) project officer Elsie Patterson said the school holiday program will be delivered in conjunction with the Gawler Health Service Aboriginal health team and Save the Children organisation.
“The purpose of the program is to support engagement with local health services for the target group as well as engage in health and wellness focussed activities,” Ms Patterson said.
“Those activities will be focussed around nutrition, physical activity and also connection to culture.
“So lots of nutrition-focussed activities will be things like cooking native food and we’ll hopefully have some bush medicine workshops, then for the physical activity part we are hoping to organise some footy workshops, some skateboarding workshops and some more causal competitions in basketball.
“Then through the connection to culture element of the program the team at the Gawler Health Service is organising some Kaurna language workshops, some Kaurna shield workshops and also some craft focussed workshops around weaving and flowers as well.”
The activities will be free and aimed at young people between the ages of eight and 18.
They will be held at various local locations over the Christmas school break, as well as after term 1 and term 2, with details to be released later in the year as they are confirmed.
Sonder Care was one of five SA organisations or groups selected for funding under the third round of the Healthy Towns Challenge.
Each year, a Healthy Towns Challenge overall award is given to the project that achieves the most improvements towards healthier living.
