Jarjums Connections: Connecting Aboriginal Culture With Yoga in Early Childhood Education and Care Services—A Partnership Story

Issue Addressed

There remains a wide health disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Effective health promotion programs and partnerships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal services are vital to improving Aboriginal health outcomes, closing the gap of inequality and working towards reconciliation.

Discussion

The Jarjums Connections program promotes Aboriginal culture through storytelling, yoga-inspired movements and mindfulness, in Early Childhood Education and Care Services (ECECS). The program was developed in collaboration between the Aboriginal Health Unit and the Health Promotion Unit in Sydney Local Health District (SLHD) and is based on Aboriginal significant animals of SLHD. The principles of yoga and its philosophies merging with Aboriginal culture have been complementary, and this synergy was harnessed to develop the program. The program has had positive feedback to date and shows promise.

Conclusion

The accomplishments and lessons learned so far from the program can inform future practice and scale-up of the program. As it moves towards a digital platform, it has the potential to be adapted and tailored to suit other Aboriginal Nations, LHDs and ECECS across the state and beyond.

So What?

Rolling the program out digitally would be a low-cost and equitable way to embed Aboriginal cultural learning into mainstream education and potentially positively affect the physical, mental and emotional well-being of children more broadly.