Our Newington community has a long-term commitment to ‘service learning’. From our Prep schools through to Year 12, we encourage children to consider their individual roles and, importantly, their responsibilities within our society. We believe this ethos is consistent with our founders’ vision, our Uniting Church ethos and our own community expectations today. As a Newington community, we’ve been doing this in the Macleay Valley since 2009 and it’s about to develop and evolve.
Year 9 students will benefit from an immersion experience away from the usual distractions of Sydney and over an eight-week period. The campus will become a transformative highlight of each student’s adolescence as their sense of curiosity and open-mindedness in explored through meaningful lived exposure to local community partnerships and connection with the local indigenous communities and their culture. The courage, integrity, and resilience of each teenager will be strengthened by going out of their comfort zone. With proper nurturing, each child’s kindness will be increased through empathy and helping each other in a range of supported interventions. Independence, teamwork, communication skills, and exploration of meaning will be enhanced through these lived experiences.
The Newington Foundation has made an initial investment in the capital works program of Eungai Creek that includes a multi-purpose hall as the epicentre of student life.
We believe that, with your support, we can better prepare this generation for life’s challenges through our social service immersion program at Eungai Creek.
Importantly, our Newington team will provide the highest level of support for young people who may be identified as needing additional care and support. All children will be known and cared for at Eungai Creek, whether struggling or doing well. Yet, we cannot do it alone.
The first group of 64 Year 9 students (currently in Year 8) will arrive at the Eungai Creek campus in February 2025, with subsequent groups each Term. We aspire to create a sustainable campus where each young person:
- feels comfortable and be at home, when away from home;
- experience the wonder of the natural environment;
- receives the best Newington education in a rural setting, and with stimulating new settings;
- lives with others for a period of months in an environmentally conscious and sustainable way;
- develops a lifelong understanding of themselves and the sense of community service;
- escapes from the challenges of being a teenager in metropolitan Sydney;
- feels confident sustaining themselves, their health and wellbeing; and
- has an enormous amount of fun.
To find out more about you can help, contact Joseph Herschel, Development Manager, jherschel@newington.nsw.edu.au or 0403 563 596.
