Noogaleek Children’s Centre gets grant to build gathering place

Noogaleek Children’s Centre in the New South Wales south coast community of Berkeley will use a $250,000 grant to build a gathering place for children, their families, educators, and the community. 

Offered through Aboriginal Affairs NSW through its ‘Community and Place Grant’ program, the service has used the funding to build the space, which features culturally appropriate play spaces and gathering areas. 

Noogaleek Children’s Centre provides early education and care to local Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children in a culturally rich environment.  

The Centre’s philosophy includes a commitment to support children, families, and the local community to understand, respect and value local Aboriginal language and culture. By creating  a natural gathering place, educators and families can reap the benefits of a quality space to meet with each other.

The nature-based playground has elements of cultural identity embedded throughout the design. This is intended to enrich the learning and development of children. The Centre hopes the playground will also help indicate to new families that Noogaleek provides high-quality early learning and care within a culturally informed environment. 

Regional Manager for the Illawarra Southern Region at Aboriginal Affairs NSW, Lana Callaghan spoke of the importance and impact the gathering space will have for the community. 

“Having culturally appropriate gathering places enables our children to understand, respect and value local Aboriginal language and culture, and it’s important in bringing people together and sharing as a community,” she said. 

The Early Start team at the University of Wollongong provided ideas and design concepts for the play space. 

 “Community and Place grants enable services like Noogaleek Children’s Centre to take on projects that benefit the local Aboriginal community and wouldn’t be possible otherwise,” Ms Callaghan said. 

“It’s great to see the outdoor gathering place that the Centre has created, which will deliver enormous benefits.”

Image credit: Samantha Henry – Noogaleek Children’s Centre | Nominated Supervisor