Our awesome project is to have murals designed and painted at the Gunawirra house by our Young Aboriginal Mothers Program (YAMP) groups.
The Young Aboriginal Mothers Program is an early intervention service for Aboriginal women from pregnancy through to their child starting school. It was formed in response to the need for mothers and their babies to be supported in building stronger, safer and healthier relationships. We have three Mothers Groups that each meet weekly.
Many Aboriginal women come from families that have struggled with generations of poverty, substance abuse, mental illness, domestic violence and family dislocation. They have few resources to call on in helping them with the challenging and difficult work of raising children.
YAMP engages with, supports and holds the mothers through the first five years of their child’s life. We provide a therapeutic space where Aboriginal women and teenagers have the opportunity to talk about and understand what has happened in their lives, to be understood and to begin to develop pride and confidence in themselves as women and as mothers. By focusing on and actively supporting the vital healthy links between mother and child, we aim to reduce the impact of intergenerational trauma in Aboriginal families.
The main purpose for the painted murals is for these Aboriginal women and their children to bond together to create an artwork that symbolises there love and connection to each other. The murals would also symbolise their identity as Aboriginal women and helps connect their children to their culture. Connecting to culture is so important and for the children to be creating and learning who they are is also very important in understanding their Aboriginality. Gunawirra’s Aboriginal artist, Graham Toomey has been teaching the mothers and their children about Aboriginal symbols and art . This allows them to tell their own stories and discover more about their own culture and creates bonds with mother and child.