The Northern Area Office for Moree Plains Shire Council and Toomelah Central School partnered with Pathfinders and UNE Enactus to host a birth certificate sign–up day under the Minimbah Project.
There are over 400 people in the Toomelah and Boggabilla area whose birth was never registered, and without a birth certificate they struggle to get access to mainstream services such as enrolling in school, opening bank accounts, joining sporting clubs, getting a driver’s licence and voting.
The two day event was open to all children, youth and families who were born in NSW and don’t have a birth certificate.
Northern Area Office coordinator Lisa Zellers said the Minimbah sign–up days gave people of all ages, cultures, and religions the chance to come down and register their own birth or the birth of their child (if they had not previously done so) and apply for a birth certificate, all freeof charge.
The Minimbah Project is a joint partnership between Pathfinders Ltd and The University of New England (UNE).
The project started after UNE students and other members of the Armidale community noticed that a large proportion of Indigenous children and children from socioeconomically disadvantaged groups had not been registered and many did not have a birth certificate.
The Minimbah Project team is also campaigning at a federal and state level to have birth registration of babies occur ‘automatically’, based on hospital admission records of mothers.
They are also proposing that birth certificates be automatically debited through Centrelink allowances, in order to stop once and for all, more than 35,000 Australian kids each year, who fail to obtain a birth certificate in the first year of life.
