Peak Hill is to have a new initiative from Gunawirra. Gunawirra will pay and supervise a local Professional who is doing her Masters in Infant Mental Health as she home visits some of the Aboriginal families who have their children in preschool there. Shiri and Kristina will visit in late August and speak with the Community to get input on their needs and requests. Gunawirra will totally finance and supervise this Project. See the Peak Hill Project page for more information.

Gunawirra is producing an activities booklet which will have 10 projects for preschools throughout NSW that have Aboriginal children. It is an initiative we are carrying out with Radford College Early Learning Centre in ACT over the next two years. We will go to Radford College for two or three days in late September to begin the process – the cartoonist, the book designer, the photographer, the writer and the publisher are all ready to get it under way. Shiri Hergass and Kristina Karasulas will play a significant role in this initiative. See the Radford Early Learning Project page for more information.

Two of Gunawirra’s dedicated workers – Patricia Glossop and Charlie Griffiths – are now trained to the level required to teach other practitioners in Marte Meo. They are meeting with Shiri Hergass to work out how they might reach into country areas, especially our nominated centres in the North Western area. We will include Bowraville in this and Peak Hill as a special centre for Gunawirra. See the Marte Meo Method page for more information on this highly successful approach.

A group of four Gunawirra staff visited Tamworth over the weekend and ran an amazing Marte Meo training sessions there with Maria Aarts from Holland. The training was attended by 36 preschool teachers who look after six Aboriginal preschools in NSW, plus a number of local community workers.

One group of five workers had joined us for the first time. Their preschool for 32 children is a corrugated iron lean-to on the back of an ancient Masonic Hall in the town of Kootingal. The good news is that the Government has agreed to provide $500,000 towards a new preschool. They want Gunawirra to help train their teachers in the best way to be as useful as possible to these needy children.

Maria Aarts immediately agreed to halve the Marte Meo fees for the workshop and that of any other country preschool centre. The six directors met with Norma and Shiri and later Patricia to discuss three new Gunawirra initiates for preschools.

To enquire about Marte Meo training please use use the form on our Contact Us page.

On August 30th to September 1st the United Nations is running its annual DPI/NGO Conference in Melbourne with the theme “Advance Global Health”.

Gunawirra has been awarded space in the exhibition area and we will be presenting our story, programs and publications to the attendees. Our video “I go to Preschool now” will also be featured in the conference audio visual presentations.

This is only the second time in 63 years that the UN has held this important global conference out of New York and Gunawirra is excited and honoured to be included.