Warrnambool assistant principal Robyn Ledin has been recognised for her role in helping vulnerable children with a South West Regional Achiever award.
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Ms Ledin, who works at Warrnambool East Primary School, received the accolade at the Regional Achievement and Community Awards gala presentation dinner at Flemington on Friday night.
Ms Ledin was recognised for her role in the school’s Nurture Room, a wellbeing program which she co-ordinates with staff, to give students experiencing trauma or grief a positive start to each day.
It also helps students to build relationships with adult mentors to give them a ‘go-to’ person.
Nurture Room staff members Tania Billington and Meredith Anderson and the school’s leadership team also attended the event.
Ms Ledin said it was nice to be acknowledged and thanked everyone who had worked on the program.
“Even though it’s in my name I consider it a team award for Warrnambool East Primary School and the wider Warrnambool education community,” Ms Ledin said.
“The category I was nominated for had an extremely strong field of finalists. It was very unexpected and very exciting because I really don’t know how the (judging) panel found a winner out of such a strong field.”
Ms Ledin was also a finalist in the same category at last year’s awards.
Other finalists included Jayson Killick who founded the Portland stroke support group, Warrnambool optometrist Jayson Ward for his role in establishing eye clinics in indigenous communities, and Warrnambool’s Maree Crabbe for her work as the Reality & Risk: Pornography, young people and sexuality, an Australian violence prevention project co-ordinator and co-founder.
Ms Ledin thanked Helen Bayne from South West Local Learning and Employment Network, which has been a Nurture Room partner since its inception in 2015, and paediatric occupational therapist Kim Ryan for her involvement. Ms Ledin also thanked award sponsors South West TAFE and Deakin University.
The Nurture Room team is now looking forward to the Department of Education 2017 Victorian Early Years Awards in Melbourne on Monday in which the program is also a finalist.
Ms Ledin said the school team was “really excited to be shortlisted” for the awards which will be presented at the Arts Centre.
“It’s an honour and it's nice to have that school award rather than an individual award because we do work as a real team.”
