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The Visitors' Park is one part of the program addressing housing issues in the camps. The
Arherlkeme Village, which provides transitional accommodation, to help homeless people move
into public housing, is part of the Housing Support Program which includes tenancy management
and services ranging from family mediation to links to employment and education opportunities.
Learning from the past, a focus of the Plan has been on improving life in the camps today.
But it has also been important to think about the future. Training and employment are about
improving the future and, so more than anything else, is education. A real priority of the
Plan has been encouraging mums and dads to give their children early experience of going
to—and enjoying – school.
We tell them that it's time now for our mob to get into school early so that they can
do, get the best for their kids.
So, we start off with just a visit. We hand out some fliers about what a playgroup and
a preschool is. So we actually explain that to them.
We go out and speak to family members and we'd check to see that they have their child
health checks, plus, you know, the children are fully immunised.
Some go and they enrol their children themselves other family members who need assistance,
that's when we take them to the schools.
It's great because it teaches them all those fundamental things that they need to learn,
their colours, their numbers, they're even doing A, B, C's here now and everything like
that its fantastic.
Every morning when they get off the bus we ask them 'what have you got to do first when
you get in the…?' 'Wash your hands'. They go straight to the foam and wash their hands.
She's learning new things and, comes back home and tells me story to, what she does
at child care. Play with the other kids and enjoy herself.
Aboriginal people automatically feel comfortable knowing, seeing an Aboriginal person in a
school. And that, that's why we're here.
It's important, yeah right from the very beginning, get that good start, and then, so that it
can continue through all the other grades.
Because school is important, and school is fun. And I think it needs to be out there
that kids do enjoy preschool. There's lots of activities. They grow into little personalities
down there.
And it's important for our mob, for the Indigenous people of Australia to actually, you know,
start, start coming together and giving their children the best that they can give them.