This year, Wanta Aboriginal Corporation has opened a new Sports Academy Program in Beswick, NT, also known as Wugularr.

The Beswick school has been extremely welcoming and supportive of the program. Stephen Hill (Principal) has provided Wanta with an academy space, as well as their RSAS coordinator, Leigh Ware, who has been very generous in helping fit out the Academy room with pool tables, table tennis, TV’s and a PlayStation. The Wanta space has had really high traffic; engaging all students at Beswick school. There are always students at the door wanting to come in! Our program has kicked off with some highlights being: Driver Ed training, Social enterprise training, and Cyber safety information sessions.

In our first social enterprise session, students looked at what a social enterprise is and what it would look like in Beswick. They learnt that it’s a business set up to make profit and that those profits go towards benefiting the community.  Students discussed businesses that existed in their region and what services they provide to make profit. They compared businesses that are not social enterprises and ones that are; and therefore, got more clarity and understanding as to why we would set up a social enterprise; to benefit the Beswick community.  In the second session we looked at ideas such as running a barber shop, creating footy merchandise for the local footy team (Beswick Bears) and selling food. Students really loved the idea of selling food and decided they wanted to run a burger shop. As a collective group; including teachers, assistant teachers, RSAS staff and students, we have decided to set up this burger shop business which has now been named by the Beswick senior students – BB’s (Beswick Burgers). We are very excited about this social enterprise project and look forward to the journey ahead.

We also had our first Wanta reward trip on the weekend, taking some senior students on a day trip to visit Mataranka, swimming in the thermal pools and enjoying burgers and chips for lunch. We have more upcoming camping trips as well as inter-school sporting events against the Ngukkur Academy who will be doing frequent visits to Beswick.

These adventures, trips and lessons we have already had are just some of many more to come and everyone is really excited for our future in Beswick!

Written by Praveen Kalaivanan, Wanta Regional Manager.