Focussed on young people, we deliver programs that support a sustainable environment, education, healthy lifestyles and independent livelihoods for Aboriginal communities in the region.

It is by investing in children and youn people of the area and through their leadership we will achieve our objectives.

The Watarrka Foundation was instrumental in reopening the Watarrka Primary School in 2011 and has since played a key role in supporting the school and the broader communities in the Watarraka region.

The Watarrka Primary School is attended by children from three homeland communities Ulpanyali, Wanmarra and Lilla located in or adjacent to Watarrka National Park.

The achievements of the Watarrka Primary School have been impressive, under principal, Christine Munro and indigenous assistant teacher, Rayleen Limbiari, students have progressed from:

• Reading at a five year-old level to reading at a 12 or 13 year-old level.

• Developing the skill of writing simple sentences to writing multi page stories.

• Early numeracy where they were struggling to count to 100 to confidently working with numbers to 1,000,000.

• Adversarial behavior to being a cohesive team that supports their peers’ development.

• Lethargic and lacking physical confidence to being fit and enjoying sports including riding fat bikes, walking, play basketball and baseball and becoming competent swimmers.

• Students are learning at the remarkable rate of 1.5 levels per year and are steadily closing the learning gap with city primary schools.

• The school also has exceptional attendance rates, with core students when on country not attending only when genuinely unwell