Valuable Indigenous Program workshops
ABOVE: AJ WILLIAMS WITH SCOTCH BOYS
This year AJ Williams-Tchen of Girraway Ganyi Consultancy has worked with Scotch’ s Indigenous Program, facilitating a variety of workshops and cultural awareness activities for the boys.
AJ, a Wiradjuri / Wotjobulak man, is well known in the indigenous sector for providing organisations, councils and government bodies, as well as their respective stakeholders, with skills to work together to develop partnerships built on respect, trust and transparency.
Our indigenous and non-indigenous boys have benefited from his expertise and experiences. The boys valued his visits to the school, as evidenced in their evaluations of the sessions, three of which appear below:
‘ One of the highlights this year was meeting AJ, who came in and talked about the troubles of indigenous people, with the gap between not only life expectancy but also wages, healthcare and many others. This was a real eye-opener, and showed how the government has treated indigenous Australians even now, when we saw photos and documentaries about places like Utopia in the Northern Territory. It has been a great experience, and one that has left me with a lot of knowledge and information that I would otherwise never have known.’ Alistair Bailey( Year 12)
‘ We were lucky enough to have several sessions with an indigenous mental health worker, AJ, who informed us about the concept of closing the gap, particularly in regards to life expectancy. He highlighted the huge difference in disease rate, suicide and other mental health issues, and encouraged everyone to empathise with those who, based solely on the circumstances of their birth, are at so much higher risk of an early death.
' He also showed us pictures of some remote towns in the Northern Territory, to emphasise how different life is there, as they can have to drive hundreds of kilometres to reach something we take for granted, such as a supermarket.’ Michael Donaghue-Evans( Year 10)
‘ PJ Crocombe( Year 10), Lachlan Johnson( Year 9) and I participated in a workshop with AJ based around mental health in indigenous youth. AJ is very passionate and knowledgeable about this issue, and he gave us a number of strategies on how to cope with personal mental health issues and how to educate others about it. The most important take-away I got from AJ was not to bottle up either our negative or positive emotions but rather not to be afraid to let others know how we feel.’ Joel Garner( Year 11) DR ROB SMITH AND MR YUDHA SCHOLES
www. scotch. vic. edu. au Great Scot 29