Shooting Stars are proud to be expanding the Seven Sisters program, a mental health and wellbeing program currently run within Shooting Sites across Western and South Australia, to service the local community of Broome. The pilot program will run for four weeks in conjunction with the Broome PCYC and will support girls that aren’t part of the Shooting Stars program.
Girls within the local Broome community aged 13 to 16 will be invited to participate, with the aim of increasing their emotional literacy, building their capacity to manage their mental health ability to self-regulate their emotions. These are skills currently taught within the Shooting Stars program, and now we are excited to bring this knowledge to a wider audience.
Seven Sisters has typically only been delivered within the Shooting Stars program, currently running within 20 sites across Western and South Australia. It was through the regular yarning circles that Shooting Stars hold with their participants that the barriers of emotional regulation, bullying and negative relationships with peers and staff were identified. Out of this, the Seven Sisters program was developed as a culturally appropriate way to address mental health and resilience amongst the participants.
Seven Sisters Coordinator, Jade McGuire, is proud of how far the program has come in the two years it’s been running. “From the first pilot in Narrogin in 2020 to rolling out the program across all our sites in 2022, we have seen a significant change among the young girls that participate in the Seven Sisters program and their emotional and social wellbeing. This ranges from increased school attendance, increased emotional literacy and understanding as well as seeing a decline in disruptive or negative behaviour. Enabling girls in the wider community will hopefully see the same results and provide girls with positive sense of self and wellbeing.”
Through the pilot we aim to ensure that all communities have access to mental health and emotional wellbeing tools to continue to challenge the status quo and empower Aboriginal girls and women.
Click through find out more about Seven Sisters and how you can get involved in empowering Aboriginal girls and women on their emotional wellbeing journey.
