Dural Education Excellence Program
30 March 2015
Over the past three years, since the establishment of the Dural Education Excellence Program in Sydney, there have been many changes and challenges. Presently, we are at full capacity with 12 Indigenous students from the East Kimberley who reside at Dural House and attend Pacific Hills Christian School. Wunan and the Dural program have been very fortunate to recruit our current houseparents, Jeff and Marilyn Smith, an Aboriginal couple originally from Queensland. The Smiths are familiar to many of our local families, having lived in the Kimberley for almost 20 years.
This year one of our original 2011 students, Justin Mosquito, will begin a carpentry apprenticeship in Sydney, having made remarkable progress over the past few years. He continues to inspire his peers and those around him and has become an example of what can be achieved with the right opportunity.
DEEP continues to be one of Wunan’s most exciting programs and offers Kimberley youth – our future leaders– opportunities to enjoy more experiences, develop their individual talents and grow in knowledge. Sharing dinner recently with the students in Sydney, I gave them an update and some background about Wunan’s new CEO, Christian Zahra . Upon advising the students that Christian is originally from Malta, one of our students responded ‘that’s somewhere over near Greece’. I love that DEEP has opened up a new world for students that allows them to learn more of the world outside of the East Kimberley.
I continue to believe that ‘Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the World’ and the Dural Program provides an opportunity for that to happen.