Jarrod Wheatley named Australia Day Ambassador
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Published on 20 December 2019
Broken Hill's Australia Day Ambassador for 2020 is social entrepreneur, Jarrod Wheatley.
Mr Wheatley has worked in the social sector since he was 17.
He has run a Youth Centre, set up programs for refugees and founded two innovative, not-for-profit organisations, Street Art Murals Australia (SAMA) and Professional Individualised Care (PIC). He works tirelessly to improve opportunities for those on the margins of our community.
Five years in the making, PIC is an accredited new model of Out-of-Home Care. Before, children who were too traumatised or high-needs for a foster home would generally be placed in an institutionalised group home. Here they would be cared for by shift workers.
Instead PIC places one child in the home of a Professional Therapeutic Carer, who can provide a therapeutic intervention and real relationships. This is both improving the lives of young people and changing how trauma-informed our sector is.
Through SAMA Jarrod used street art as vehicle for social inclusion and urban beatification, breaking the negative cycle of criminalisation and alienation by commissioning murals and workshops. Street artists have now painted more than 360 murals all over the country, for clients such as Pfizer and Lend Lease.
Council's Australia Day Awards ceremony will be held at the Civic Centre on January 26, 2020.