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Work starts on $12.8m Aboriginal student housing project at UWA

Local Noongar man, the Hon. Ken Wyatt MP, Federal Minister for Aged Care and Indigenous Health, turned the first sod for a $12.8 million Aboriginal accommodation project at St Catherine’s College at The University of Western Australia (UWA).

Funding for the innovative accommodation project came through the Employment and Educational Housing program facilitated by the State-Commonwealth National Partnership on Remote Housing (NPRH) agreement.

When completed, the St Catherine’s College project will double the capacity of the existing Dandjoo Darbalung program to provide accommodation to Aboriginal students from regional and remote communities, enrolled in tertiary education.

The Department of Communities is working with St Catherine’s on the project’s procurement and construction, while St Catherine’s will manage the operation of the Dandjoo Darbalung program which is expected to launch in time for the start of Semester 1, 2019.

Photo: Winthrop Hall, UWA (By Photograph by Greg O’Beirne (Own work) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons)