Why Warriors: facilitating social change in Galiwin’ku
Ferment Collaborate is working with Why Warriors in the East Arnhem community of Galiwin’ku (Elcho Island) to facilitate healthy lifestyle, creative engagement and community governance outcomes.
Living in Arnhem Land you eventually have to face the constant climate of grief and tragedy that the local people must endure.
It is played out most concretely in the constant string of funerals. There are literally bodies lined up in morgues, as families plan funeral dates to avoid too much over lap with other funerals in the community.
In fact, remote Indigenous people face many difficulties in their communities; widespread health problems, low levels of education, and poor rates of employment. However, few existing services are able to provide for local community and economic development, or tackle the entrenched welfare dependency that underlies much Indigenous disadvantage. Most personnel are so busy providing basic services or implementing external government policy that no one is available for responding to local motivation.
The Indigenous people of north east Arnhem Land, have many ideas, and visions for their future development. Visions to start their own businesses, desires to learn new skills, visions to live and trade from their lands, dreams of independence and to control their future. But when an Indigenous person wants to start a new enterprise they are limited by cultural barriers, and poor education about the mainstream social, legal and economic systems.
Human enterprise facilitation provides them a service to overcome these limitations. The grass roots development that AHED and Hope For Health enables will contribute to improved self worth, and self-mastery leading to long term reduction in welfare dependency and improvement in well-being.
Hope for Health
Yolngu face an epidemic of disease. Chronic preventable disease. A week that goes by without an announcement of another death is a very good week. And every other week leaves people wondering, why are we dying? Young people in their 20’s and early 30’s now die from sudden heart attacks or strokes. Why?… Till recently Yolŋu have had no evidence that these diseases are preventable and that this situation can change.
But Dianne’s transformation from wheel chair bound deteriorating diabetic to energetic evangelist for good food, provided the evidence. Suddenly people saw some hope, a real hope for good health.
And so was born a vision for an intensive healing program in Galiwin’ku that could coach people into good health. A group of ladies plan to build this solution, but they need help themselves to change their own health first, and build extensive knowledge of health management. We’re working with them to create a food cooperative, cooking demonstration program, healthy lifestyle discussions and more.
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The AHED Program
Arnhem Human Enterprise Development is a project in responsive and sustainable development designed to bring hope, prosperity and new possibilities to desperately disempowered Indigenous communities in remote Australia.
AHED Enterprise Facilitators are embedded in the community to ensure their availability to the local people, to respond when asked (and only when asked) to assist the visions of local people.
Facilitators play an educational role, using cross-cultural educational methodologies and the local Indigenous language and cultural concepts to fill knowledge gaps, working in the local language to allow effective exchange of cultural knowledge. The focus is always on supporting the client, not the enterprise, ensuring that the client can maintain complete control of and are primary participants in their endeavour.
Find out more here
All information sourced from the Why Warriors website.