Yarning Group is another family for me
KIA Yam Noonook!.... (hello, how are you?)
ALIWAH!... (listen to what we have to say). We are a group of Aboriginal people with disabilities who meet weekly to give each other support and engage in activities that collectively build our capacity. We have been meeting for two years and have recently moved our activities to the Champion Centre. KM Consultancy Services is an NDIS service provider that we utilise to provide culturally secure activities and social and emotional wellbeing support services.
This collaboration means that we have the best opportunity to make healthy choices, build our capacity, and have a voice. We participate in activities that allow us to focus on achieving our NDIS goals and healthy lifestyle decision- making. We regularly participate in art, music, language, and cultural activities as well as improving our daily living around domestic skills, attaining our drivers’ license, and everyday daily skills such as budgeting and navigating social services.
Many of us have been able to find pathways to improve literacy and numeracy and to choose positive mental health and healthy lifestyle goals.
We wanted as a group to give you some snippets of our stories and what is important to us. We all hope that you enjoy hearing about our wishes, our journey, and our successes.
Here are some stories from our journal:
"I would love to move to my new home soon. I also want to move on from smoking cigarettes, to have a new healthy life where I could be safe, independent, and healthy. I could do this by thinking nothing is going to bring me down. I know that I will achieve this through the support of all my friends, families, and support workers.”
“Over the last 12 months, I have lost weight, learned more about healthy eating so that I can manage my diabetes better. I know how important this is and want to be able to live independently so that I can cook for myself, have my own private space and be able to live a life that makes me happy. I also want to start finding my family, my family comes from Alice Springs.”
“Yarning Group is another family for me. I sometimes connect with many other people to find out they are family. I also feel safe and welcome and know that if I need any information or guidance, someone is there to help. It is good that we sit together and yarn about anything, so many laughs true.”
“I love listening to music. I love to hear some of our mob sing and play the guitar. This makes me smile. I also like that people have started to learn how to communicate with me, using all sorts of different resources."
We have decided as a group to use snippets our stories and turn them into a song. We decided to do this because many of us love music, and can play the guitar and sing. We hope that we can share with you all sometime soon.
Thank you for listening to our stories, this has been good that we can have our voice heard and share our journey and successes.