In July 2020, Life Again commenced a dialogue with a large organisation with the intention of securing significant funding towards this program. The aim is to provide the ‘Shields First’ program exclusively to Aboriginal men in the remote central Australian Indigenous communities of Kintore, Mt Liebig and Papunya and deliver targeted health and well-being activities to Luritja and Pintupi men.

The program is coordinated by Jamie Tjupurrula, a lore man in the Western Desert. Jamie received his qualifications in healing and toolmaking from the elders of the Western Desert region. He draws on his life experiences, learning to forge a pathway of understanding between the modern world and Aboriginal cultural ways of wellbeing, healing and health.

This program calls on ‘cultural strengthening’ through toolmaking workshops to support Indigenous men into heathy relationships. Through relearning and reactivating traditional modes of tool and weapon making, self-esteem is bolstered by instilling a sense of cultural pride and value. 

The Shields First program has been developed by Wild1, a partner organisation to Life Again, through a thorough consultation process with individuals and groups, identifying their needs with a focus on wellbeing. Facilitation of healing through accessing cultural beliefs and values is a method of healing that is unrecognised and misunderstood by the current Australian health system. Life Again in partnership with WILD1 will provide direct program delivery of the ‘Shields First’ program to those very communities.