The 2022 annual Wanta PD took place in Darwin last month, with staff from all of our nine communities attending the event. The PD began with a Welcome to Larrakia Country from Wanta’s Chairperson of the Board Elizabeth Lechleitner.

This year’s PD focused on capacity building of staff in a variety of areas. We had NAPCAN attend and present a certified “preventing child abuse and neglect mandatory reporting” training for all staff. We also had ‘Youth Flourish Outdoors’ present training in trauma informed practice with young people.

Ruth Arnel, Wanta’s Finance and HR Manager provided training for all staff in financial administration and our CEO Demian Coates provided an update of current programming and contracts to all staff. Our Regional Manager, Tenille Rickard launched our new initiative  – the custom developed ‘Wanta App’. with all staff receiving training in how to use it. This app enables staff in remote communities to collate targeted data and statistics around our programming and to gather consultation and feedback from children, youth and community members using contemporary technology, which is culturally appropriate and specific to the unique settings Wanta works in. It also provides quick links to all of our Wanta administration, to allow quick and easy access to our database no matter where you are!

 Our regional Manager, Praveen Kalaivanan ran program development sessions, enabling and empowering staff to be able to deliver culturally appropriate alternative education programs in remote Indigenous communities for children and young people.

Our staff also partook in Rhythm2Recovery facilitator training which ensures all Wanta staff in each of our nine communities are certified facilitators to provide social and emotional wellbeing programs to children and young people. This adds to the already provided training in Love Bites by NAPCAN for all staff to provide healthy relationship activities for children and youth living in remote Indigenous communities.

The PD enabled all staff to come together to further develop Wanta’s ever growing alternative education programs. This sought expertise and cultural sharing and knowledge from all staff in areas of cooking and nutrition, social enterprise development, our job ready program and cyber safety. The three full days we spent together, sharing our knowledge and building on our skills was once again a major success and invaluable as we move forward. Not to mention, such a pleasure to see and spend time with each other as the Wanta team!