The partnership between two local boxing clubs not only provides free sport opportunities but also a space to learn about First Nations culture for children.
Coldstream Boxing Club (CBC) and Healesville-based Warrior Christopher Hume Boxing (WCBH) celebrated NAIDOC Week together on Saturday 19 July despite the week officially taking place between 6 and 13 July.
The cultural ceremony, including a smoking ceremony and a welcome to country, was led by WCHB coach Chris Hume, an Aboriginal elder who is the senior cultural educator for Wurundjeri Woiwurrung at University of Melbourne.
“The smoking ceremony was to bring the two gyms together and to celebrate that coming together so that you get more opportunities for the kids in the eastern metropolitan region,” Hume said.
“We’re bringing the kids together to bridge the gap between Aboriginal kids and non-Indigenous kids to bring everyone on the same level together and to close that gap in health and well-being as well.”
Hume, the 2023 Victorian Masters Boxing Champion, has offered free boxing classes to children and youth under the age of 18 in Healesville since 2022.
“That’s basically to give the kids something to do while they’re around town and take them away from the influence of belonging to the cultures of society like spray painting, drugs, alcohol and all that sort of stuff,” Hume said.
CBC coach Hayden Wright, who won the Victorian Heavyweight Championship last year, has also donated his boxing talent to the local children for free in Coldstream since March 2024.
After the cultural ceremony, the two gyms had a training session and sausage sizzles.
“We met a lot of new people and kids, and talked about what we’re about, what we aim to do in the future, and how we can benefit the youth as free boxing gyms,” Wright said.
The collaboration between two gyms started about a month ago when Hume contacted Wright after seeing CBC’s great works for the children.
“We’ve been working together for the last month to bring the youth of the eastern metropolitan region together for health, fitness and cultural engagement,” Hume said.
They have delivered free training sessions together ever since and finally had a special event for cultural engagement.
“Chris also provides free boxing classes to the youth in the community. We set some times where we could do a training session together to see if we had the same goals and the same beliefs,” Wright said.
“We had a number of training sessions together, then we started to think about the future, what we’d like to do for the Yarra Valley, what is good for the kids and what we believe in.
“And a lot of those goals were very similar, so we proposed the idea.”
Both gyms are looking forward to providing more opportunities for the younger generations in the region through the partnership.
