A new initiative by the Worimi Local Aboriginal Land Council (WLALC), in Port Stephens NSW, is helping stop the spread of Covid-19 one face mask at a time. 

While WLALC’s business operations are at a halt, they’ve shifted their focus to creating washable cultural Aboriginal print face masks.

Chief Executive Officer of the Worimi Local Aboriginal Community, Andrew Smith said, “People are more important than Profit and we needed something to keep our staff and community safe and stimulated through this crisis.”

The masks are designed to assist in the wellbeing of Elders in the local and wider Aboriginal communities.

WLALC have not only been able to keep staff stimulated with this new venture, they’ve also created a small stimulus revenue stream from the business activity, with over 1800 masks sold so far.

This new business stream has boosted team morale and lifted staff spirits.

Each week the WLALC Employees are checking in on their local Aboriginal community to ensure that they are safe, while also checking what resources may be needed.

“Social-distancing and limited store supplies put a lot of pressure on our community and especially our ‘high risk’ Elders so, we put emergency measures in place and now deliver ‘free’ essential boxes of fresh produce (fruit, veg, meat & sanitary items etc) to our community while also sending staff out to help with small maintenance jobs, such as lawn mowing,” Andrew Smith explains. 

“Strength doesn’t come from just doing the things we know how to do well; it’s overcoming and rising to the challenges we thought we couldn’t.  Business as usual will be back soon because we are resilient.  It’s in our blood.”

The future looks bright for WLALC, with many more ideas in the works. This Includes new Aboriginal print conference bags for events scheduled for 2021 and will also complement their new conference centre at Murrook in Williamtown, NSW. 

Masks are available to order in Australia for $10 (AUD) each, including postage by emailing che@worimi.org.au. 

Find out more here www.worimi.org.au