Community Housing Housing Ltd (CHL) is helping promote a fundraising campaign to ensure children in a remote Aboriginal community can continue to access early learning, with space issues threatening the current program.
Wurreranginy, commonly known as Frog Hollow, is an independent community with a strong council of Gija Elders and community members. The community has worked together for over 30 years to establish an independent, Aboriginal-governed school on their home country, so their families and future generations to come could receive a quality education and live in the nurturing and safe community of Frog Hollow.
Both the school and the Early Learning Centre teach with a two-way approach, having both Gija language and English being spoken and taught daily in classrooms, further strengthening the cultural identity of the children and ensuring they are skilled in both worlds.
Frog Hollow is thriving, enrollments at the school have increased 350 per cent over the past three years, with 44 students enrolling in 2018.
The current Early Learning Program has 13 children aged 0-3 and, until this year, has operated out of an empty classroom, however as student numbers at the school grow, the classroom is now required as a learning space for the primary aged children – leaving the preschoolers with nowhere to go.
An Early Learning Centre is vital to engage children from the early years into education, and support their transition to school.
Funds raised for an ELC will not only guarantee educational opportunities for preschool aged children, it will also create employment opportunities for community members involved in the build and construction of the facility and for those employed to work in the ELC, as well as providing a safe place for children to stay while their families are working.
The Early Years Program has been a dream of the Elders of Frog Hollow who see the importance of education for their children. Until recently, the community has been able to make use of community and school resources to ensure the program can exist, however due to a lack of Government funding to build the ELC, Frog Hollow community are seeking innovative ways to fund this project.
To support the cause, students from the school have created an official logo and participated in the making of, and have starred in, a series of videos and photographs which will be housed on the dedicated Facebook page created to raise awareness and keep people up to date with the status of the project.
In total of $240,000.00 is being sought to cover the costs of the required materials, the extensive costs in transporting them to the site, and labour. Donations are tax deductible or alternatively, there is an option to instead choose a small gift relative to the value of donation.