St Catherine's, Waverley

For us we wanted to use Yarnup as a tool to strengthen the relationships we already have with the La Perouse community. The comunity came into the school in great numbers. It was fantastic and Yarnup definitely strengthened our community connection.  

The other great thing was that one of our Aboriginal students who was a Yarnup team member grew in confidence as a result of being involved in Yarnup.

We noticed as a result of Yarnup that more Aboriginal families have applied to our school to try and obtain an Aboriginal scholarship for their daughter. We currently offer 15 scholarships to local urban Aboriginal kids. This year we had an unprecedented application rate which was definitely linked to Yarnup and inviting the local community into the school to see Kanyini.

Yarnup is a great program because students really need a support structure when watching the film Kanyini. They need de-briefing and a context as it is a very confronting film. Yarnup provides this support. We have personally seen a huge and dramatic shift in racist attitudes amongst some of our students after we partake in step 1 of Yarnup.

We are so happy we got involved in Yarnup. Thank you to the Yarnup team and all who made Yarnup possible.


Masada College

Yarnup was an amazingly positive experience for us. There were no links with the Aboriginal community prior to Yarnup. Yarnup definitely set up the links to develop very strong bonds with members of the Aboriginal community.
 
There clearly is now an incredible potential within Masada to build on these bonds and we plan to do that over the years to come in a number of ways: i) within the curriculum, ii) through cultural outings outside of the school and iii) musically. We have created some beautiful music by combining the didgeridoo with traditional Hebrew music.

We have also just applied for funding to continue to forge links with the local Aboriginal community at a number of levels for 2009.  Yarnup definitely gave us this impetus. It is just the beginning.



Loreto Normanhurst

 In the beginning of this year we didn't even know we had a local indigenous community which was existing near our school.  We also didn't know that they met on a regular basis.

Yarnup prompted the girls to make a connection with the local indigenous community for the first time which we plan to continue with. We are employing someone next year who is going to help us get involved more with the local community.

We were so thrilled when we got an email from Aunty Jenny who attended the screening. She wrote to us and said how thrilled she was with the experience and how impressed she was with the girl's enthusiasm to learn about Aboriginal people and culture.

Interestingly some of our students who held quite racist attitudes in the beginning really shifted their thinking after being involved in Yarnup.

Melanie Hogan said a few powerful things to the girls which prompted some of the racist attitudes to shift. One comment in particular really stayed with the girls. Melanie said she had changed her father's attitude about Aboriginal Australia. That really impacted upon the girls because they realised if they could just change one person's attitude then they were making a difference.

Yarnup was a very positive experience.  Absolutely worth doing. It's a very powerful program.
   


Waverley College

We have a closer relationship now with some people from the local Redfern community which we did not have in place at all before Yarnup. We also now have plans to connect with a remote Aboriginal community next year and are in the planning stages of that now. We also have plans to invite local stolen generation members into the school to talk next term.

The kids at our school loved the movie, Kanyini, which is great. You couldn't hear a pin drop when the movie was playing. Now, every student in the school has seen the film.
 

Each child coming into our school next year at year 7 level will be required to watch Kanyini. We also now have the Aboriginal flag flying in our school everyday. We will keep working on our relationship with Aboriginal people. Yarnup gave us a platform to start. It is just a beginning.  



Bonnyrigg High School

Yarnup definitely strengthened the relationship we have with the local Aboriginal community. Yarnup was also instrumental in getting our smoking circle started. We secured funding to construct a ceremonial circle in the school. This circle will be used by the local community as a smoking circle which means that at the beginning of each year the local elders will come into the school and do a smoking ceremony to welcome the new students onto the land. This construction (being built in term 4) is definitely a legacy of our Yarnup experience and it will be in the school for years to come.

For us, Yarnup been a very positive experience. Sometimes it was challenging because it is a program run by students and they are so busy with other things.  Overall though Yarnup was great because it brought the community together.



Dubbo College

The school was already working on a relationship with the local Aboriginal community at the beginning of this year and Yarnup cemented that relationship.

Yarnup also united the school and the parents of the Aboriginal students. That was a great result for us.

We had a really positive experience with Yarnup and got a lot of positive feedback from the students, teachers and parents.

An overall positive experience. The experience was so positive in fact that the entire staff has now seen Kanyini and nearly every student in the school.