MiiMi Mothers Aboriginal Corporation
Bowraville isn’t just known for producing great footballers!
The football feats of one of Bowraville’s great sons, Greg Inglis, are very well known. Well, now there is also MiiMi Mothers Aboriginal Corporation putting this small NSW mid-north coast township on the map!
MiiMi, as it is affectionately known in the community (it means ‘mother’ in the local Gumbaynggirr language), is now your one-stop shop for community support services. Not just for Bowraville, but also for the bigger nearby towns of Macksville and Nambucca Heads.
The corporation was founded in 1993 by a small group of passionate Gumbaynggirr Elders led by Aunty Ruth Walker. This fulfilled a need for more local support for Aboriginal mothers and their families. MiiMi went from renting a humble $50 a week house at one end of the main street of Bowraville to buying their own premises in 2007 in the centre of town. The corporation has come a long way.
MiiMi House is conveniently located on the main street of the Bowraville township. From there MiiMi delivers a range of services to the community, such as advocacy and referral services, weekly group meetings, community development and access to an ever growing range of service providers.
The corporation primarily provides services to the large Aboriginal community, but is now also the main agency managing the newly created Youth-Fest Event Fund for the whole community. This is a huge achievement for a small Aboriginal corporation. The $175 000, funded in partnership with the NSW Department of Community Services, will be dispersed to youth groups for events between Forster in the south and Tweed Heads to the north.
Another of MiiMi’s exciting new activities is the Bowraville Fitness Club. This program, supported by the NSW Department of Sport and Recreation, aims to get the community of Bowraville ‘moving’ by offering a range of activities such as boot scooting, yoga, tai chi, taekwondo and a walking group.
Other weekly activities include a new craft group, a parents group and the Bowraville Men’s Group, ‘Blokes with Options’, where local men learn about horticulture through the NSW TAFE.
According to the chairperson, Tracey Singleton, the corporation is going from strength to strength since they acquired their own premises. Buying the new building meant that the corporation’s governance and operations had to be sustainable, so the corporation members had governance training about 12 months ago and implemented the corporation’s new CATSI rule book.
To learn more about the work MiiMi is doing, go to www.miimi.org.au.