Wadeye Girls Project
Donation protected
I am raising money to help fund the Wadeye Girls Project which I am the founder of. This project is based around creating better futures for young girls from the ages of 6 to 18 years old from the remote indigenous community of Wadeye, (as so known as Port Keats) in the Northern Territory.
I was a Police Officer in the Northern Territory for almost 12 years and after working in remote communities for most part of 2013 I got to experience and see first-hand what real life remote indigenous communities are like and exactly what issues they face on a daily basis. I initially worked closely with the community of Wadeye before being spread across the region and working with eight remote indigenous communities in total but there was always a calling to keep coming back to Wadeye.
In December 2013 due to family commitment I returned to Darwin and left my role in the remote communities, then went on to take long service leave and return to my family in Toowoomba, Queensland. During my extended leave period I realised my vision in life had grown bigger than what the Northern Territory Police Force could offer me so I resigned from my position as a Police Officer and began to take my life to the next level.
It was then that I decided to do the Big Red Run as a personal challenge to push myself far outside my comfort zone in order to really step it up and to be able to tell myself “You ran for 6 days, in total 250kms across a desert in the middle of nowhere so there’s nothing in this world I cannot achieve.”
It wasn’t long after I decided to commit to the Big Red Run that I decided I wanted to help build better futures for women and children in remote indigenous communities but this time as Sarah the person not Sarah the Police Officer. The general public only see and hear what the media broadcasts and the majority of the media for Wadeye in the past has been negative with the Community being at unrest, the murders of gang leaders and large riots destroying buildings and property. Although even with this media there has always been a protected view, real life remote community living has never been widely exposed to the nation let alone the world, if you asked a person on the street in Melbourne, Sydney or Adelaide about their knowledge on remote indigenous Australia I dare say it would be very limited if anything at all.
So I thought how can I bring the real lives of those living in remote indigenous Australia to the attention of the Nation and the attention of the world to show the extreme issues we have in our own back yard. By extreme issues I mean the high level of domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, sexual abuse and violence against women and children and also the tough living conditions not only the women and children have in these communities but also the men. But I also want to show the amazing people living out in these communities and how they approach their lives each day with the challenges and boundaries they have being indigenous and living remotely.
I want to capture the pure talent a number of locals have in music, art and sports to show the world. I want to share the culture that is very real and still very alive in the remote communities to show the rest of the world, Australia does have culture and it is very strong still within the indigenous communities.
But mostly I want to give the indigenous people a platform for their voices to be heard on an international level as we as a nation and the world have been very subdued on the reality of life in a remote Indigenous community. It’s time to see it for what it actually is and to realise we have our own problem in our own back yard in Australia and it’s real and it’s a huge problem. Ask any person who is not from the community of Wadeye originally that is out there in the community working and doing their best to help about the community and they will all say it is 4th world country conditions that the local people are living in and the children are growing up in but yet it it’s not exposed to the nation and not recognised as the level of problem it really is. It’s time to change this and have the people know that we can do so much more to help and I am not talking about giving money I am talking about physically helping whether it be donating clothes or going into the communities to work or giving your time to come to communities and work on local projects with local women and children like quite a number of people do in foreign countries.
There is so much exposure through media about the starving children in Africa or the orphaned children in Nepal and everywhere I look these days there seems to be a charity for an overseas issue. This is all very much in your face on a day to day basis but yet the majority of the country let alone the world would not have a clue how poor the living conditions of indigenous children are in a remote communities across Australia because it is not directly reported on and not exposed to the extent it needs to be to get people involved.
So I created the Wadeye Girls Project and I decided to invite three indigenous girls from Wadeye Community to come along on the run with me and to film a documentary of myself on my own personal journey along with three girls from one of the toughest and largest Indigenous communities in Australia who had never travelled to Queensland and never been given an opportunity like this one, that will change their lives forever.
I was a Police Officer in the Northern Territory for almost 12 years and after working in remote communities for most part of 2013 I got to experience and see first-hand what real life remote indigenous communities are like and exactly what issues they face on a daily basis. I initially worked closely with the community of Wadeye before being spread across the region and working with eight remote indigenous communities in total but there was always a calling to keep coming back to Wadeye.
In December 2013 due to family commitment I returned to Darwin and left my role in the remote communities, then went on to take long service leave and return to my family in Toowoomba, Queensland. During my extended leave period I realised my vision in life had grown bigger than what the Northern Territory Police Force could offer me so I resigned from my position as a Police Officer and began to take my life to the next level.
It was then that I decided to do the Big Red Run as a personal challenge to push myself far outside my comfort zone in order to really step it up and to be able to tell myself “You ran for 6 days, in total 250kms across a desert in the middle of nowhere so there’s nothing in this world I cannot achieve.”
It wasn’t long after I decided to commit to the Big Red Run that I decided I wanted to help build better futures for women and children in remote indigenous communities but this time as Sarah the person not Sarah the Police Officer. The general public only see and hear what the media broadcasts and the majority of the media for Wadeye in the past has been negative with the Community being at unrest, the murders of gang leaders and large riots destroying buildings and property. Although even with this media there has always been a protected view, real life remote community living has never been widely exposed to the nation let alone the world, if you asked a person on the street in Melbourne, Sydney or Adelaide about their knowledge on remote indigenous Australia I dare say it would be very limited if anything at all.
So I thought how can I bring the real lives of those living in remote indigenous Australia to the attention of the Nation and the attention of the world to show the extreme issues we have in our own back yard. By extreme issues I mean the high level of domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, sexual abuse and violence against women and children and also the tough living conditions not only the women and children have in these communities but also the men. But I also want to show the amazing people living out in these communities and how they approach their lives each day with the challenges and boundaries they have being indigenous and living remotely.
I want to capture the pure talent a number of locals have in music, art and sports to show the world. I want to share the culture that is very real and still very alive in the remote communities to show the rest of the world, Australia does have culture and it is very strong still within the indigenous communities.
But mostly I want to give the indigenous people a platform for their voices to be heard on an international level as we as a nation and the world have been very subdued on the reality of life in a remote Indigenous community. It’s time to see it for what it actually is and to realise we have our own problem in our own back yard in Australia and it’s real and it’s a huge problem. Ask any person who is not from the community of Wadeye originally that is out there in the community working and doing their best to help about the community and they will all say it is 4th world country conditions that the local people are living in and the children are growing up in but yet it it’s not exposed to the nation and not recognised as the level of problem it really is. It’s time to change this and have the people know that we can do so much more to help and I am not talking about giving money I am talking about physically helping whether it be donating clothes or going into the communities to work or giving your time to come to communities and work on local projects with local women and children like quite a number of people do in foreign countries.
There is so much exposure through media about the starving children in Africa or the orphaned children in Nepal and everywhere I look these days there seems to be a charity for an overseas issue. This is all very much in your face on a day to day basis but yet the majority of the country let alone the world would not have a clue how poor the living conditions of indigenous children are in a remote communities across Australia because it is not directly reported on and not exposed to the extent it needs to be to get people involved.
So I created the Wadeye Girls Project and I decided to invite three indigenous girls from Wadeye Community to come along on the run with me and to film a documentary of myself on my own personal journey along with three girls from one of the toughest and largest Indigenous communities in Australia who had never travelled to Queensland and never been given an opportunity like this one, that will change their lives forever.
Organizer
Sarah Kings
Organizer
Stratford, NZ