Shared Responsibility Agreements

Shared Responsibility Agreement

The Brewarrina community is working with the Australian and New South Wales Governments to empower local Aboriginal women and improve the community’s general well-being. This builds on an SRA signed in December 2004 to help local kids who are not engaged in education.

The SRA creates opportunities for the women of Brewarrina to work and learn homemaking and craft skills and provide healthy food to schoolchildren. The community has identified a safer community with responsible alcohol consumption, addressing family breakdown and keeping the community’s women strong and healthy as some of their community priorities.

The community will rent premises for a women’s centre, that will provide a safe environment, a support network and an opportunity to learn new skills. Home wares will be produced (such as curtains, quilts, sheets and soft furnishings) and eventually arts and crafts. The home wares will be used in local houses and may become the basis for a business as the centre expands to include facilities such as a laundromat.

The women will also run the school canteen, learning skills in food handling and financial management as well as providing healthy food to the children.

Governments will support this project by providing capital and start up costs, funding equipment, providing training through TAFE, and providing free rent and electricity for three months for the school canteen.

Under this SRA, the community will continue to support other initiatives such as the ‘moselle ban’ and the ‘granny patrol’ (where senior women in the community operate a night patrol to return children to their homes).

^ Back to contents

Key Facts

Regional town in north-west NSW

Population:

Around 1500, the majority Indigenous

Focus of the SRA:

Community well-being and women’s development

What the SRA provides:

Women’s projects

ICC:

Bourke

^ Back to contents